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Read the following passage and choose the correct answer to each of the
questions that follow.
IMAGE AND THE CITY
In the city, we are barraged with images of the people we might become. Identity is presented
as plastic, a matter of possessions and appearance; and a very large proportion of the urban
landscape is taken up by slogans, advertisements, flatly photographed images of folk heroes –
the man who turned into a sophisticated dandy overnight by drinking a particular brand of
drink, the girl who transformed herself into a femme fatale with a squirt of cheap scent. The
tone of the wording of these advertisements is usually pert and facetious, comically drowning
in its own hyperbole. But the pictures are brutally exact: they reproduce every detail of a style
of life, down to the brand of cigarette-lighter, the stone in the ring, and the economic row of
books on the shelf.
Even in the business of the mass-production of images of identity, this shift from the general
to the diverse and particular is quite recent. Consider another line of stills: the back-lit, soft-
focus portraits of the first and second generations of great movie stars. There is a degree of
romantic unparticularity in the face of each one, as if they were communal dream-projections
of society at large. Only in the specialized genres of westerns, farces and gangster movies
were stars allowed to have odd, knobby cadaverous faces. The hero as loner belonged to
history or the underworld: he spoke from the perimeter of society, reminding us of its
dangerous edges.
The stars of the last decade have looked quite different. Soft-focus photography has gone, to
be replaced by a style which searches out warts and bumps, and emphasizes the uniqueness
not the generality of the face. Voices, too, are strenuously idiosyncratic; whines, stammers and
low rumbles are exploited as features of “star quality”. Instead of romantic heroes and
heroines, we have a brutalist, hard-edged style in which isolation and egotism are assumed as
natural social conditions.
In the movies, as in the city, the sense of stable hierarchy has become increasingly exhausted;
we no longer live in a world where we can all share the same values, and the same heroes. (It
is doubtful whether this world, so beloved of nostalgia moralists, ever existed; but lip-service
was paid to it, the pretence, at last, was kept up.) The isolate and the eccentric push towards
the centre of the stage; their fashions and mannerisms are presented as having as good a claim
to the limelight and the future as those of anyone else. In the crowd on the underground
platform, one may observe a honeycomb of fully-worked-out worlds, each private, exclusive,
bearing little comparison with its nearest neighbor. What is prized in one is despised in
another. There are no clear rules about how one is supposed to manage one’s body, dress, talk,
or think. Though there are elaborate protocols and etiquettes among particular cults and
groups within the city, they subscribe to no common standard.
For the new arrival, this disordered abundance is the city’s most evident and alarming quality.
He feels as if he has parachuted into a funfair of contradictory imperatives. There are so many
people he might become, and a suit of clothes, a make of car, and a brand of cigarettes, will go
some way towards turning him into a personage even before he has discovered who that
personage is. Personal identity has always been deeply rooted in property, but hitherto the
relationship has been a simple one – a question of buying what you could afford, and leaving
your wealth to announce your status. In the modern city, there are so many things to buy, such
a quantity of different kinds of status, that the choice and its attendant anxieties have created a
new pornography of state.
The leisure pages of the Sunday newspapers, fashion magazines, TV plays, popular novels,
cookbooks, window displays all nag at the nerve of our uncertainty and snobbery. Should we
like American cars, hard-rock hamburger joints, Bauhaus chairs…? Literature and art are
promoted as personal accessories, the paintings of Mondrian or the novels of Samuel Beckett
“go” with certain styles like matching handbags. There is in the city a creeping imperialism of
taste, in which more and more commodities are made over to being mere expressions of
personal identity. The piece of furniture, the pair of shoes, the book, the film, are important
not so much in themselves but for what they communicate about their owners; and ownership
is stretched to include what one likes or believes in as well as what one can buy.
1. What does the writer say about advertisements in the first paragraph?
A. They often depict people that most other people would not care to be like.
( depict people who wouldn’t be liked)
B. The pictures in them accurately reflect the way that some people really live
C. Certain kinds are considered more effective in cities than others. ( effectiveness varied)
D. The way in which some of them are worded is cleverer than it might appear. ( cleverer
worded)
2. What does a “femme fatale” refer to?
A. a beautiful woman who spends her time enjoying herself
B. a gorgeous woman who realizes most men’s dream
C. a potential good wife
D. an attractive woman who may bring unhappiness to men
3. The word “facetious” is closest in meaning to _____.
A. flippant B. prevalent C. impudent D. complacent
4. The writer says that if you look at a line of advertisements on a tube train, it is clear that
_____.
A. city dwellers have very diverse ideas about what image they would like to have
B. some images in advertisements have a general appeal that others lack
C. city dwellers are more influenced by images on advertisements than other people are
D. some images are intended to be representative of everyone’s aspirations
5. What does the writer imply about portraits of old movie stars?
A. They reflected an era in which people felt basically safe.
B. They made people feel that their own faces were rather unattractive.
C. They tried to disguise the less attractive features of their subjects.
D. Most people did not think they were accurate representations of the stars in them.
6. What does the writer suggest about the stars of the last decade?
A. Most people accept that they are not typical of society as a whole.
B. They make an effort to speak in a way that may not be pleasant on the ear.
C. Some of them may be uncomfortable about the way they come across.
D. They make people wonder whether they should become more selfish.
7. The writer uses the crowd on an underground platform to exemplify his belief that
_____.
A. no one in a city has strict attitudes towards the behavior of others
B. no single attitude to life is more common than another in a city
C. people in cities would like to have more in common with each other
D. views of what society was like in the past are often accurate
8. The writer implies that new arrivals in a city may _____.
A. acquire a certain image without understanding what that involves
B. underestimate the importance of wealth
C. decide that status is of little importance
D. change the image they wish to have too frequently
9. The novels of Samuel Beckett is an example of _____.
A. classic literature works that make their owners feel superior to other people
B. literature works of high artistic value
C. possessions that show owners’ identity
D. what is wanted by the majority in the society
10. What point does the writer make about city dwellers in the final paragraph?
A. They are unsure as to why certain things are popular with others.
B. They are keen to be the first to appreciate new styles.
C. They want to acquire more and more possessions.
D. They are aware that judgments are made about them according to what they buy.
Các bạn giúp mình bài đọc này với ạ
Mình làm rồi, check key mà không biết chỗ sai ở đâu mà sửa
Đây là key ạ
1.B 2.D 3.A 4.A 5.A 6.B 7.B 8.A 9.C 10.D
questions that follow.
IMAGE AND THE CITY
In the city, we are barraged with images of the people we might become. Identity is presented
as plastic, a matter of possessions and appearance; and a very large proportion of the urban
landscape is taken up by slogans, advertisements, flatly photographed images of folk heroes –
the man who turned into a sophisticated dandy overnight by drinking a particular brand of
drink, the girl who transformed herself into a femme fatale with a squirt of cheap scent. The
tone of the wording of these advertisements is usually pert and facetious, comically drowning
in its own hyperbole. But the pictures are brutally exact: they reproduce every detail of a style
of life, down to the brand of cigarette-lighter, the stone in the ring, and the economic row of
books on the shelf.
Even in the business of the mass-production of images of identity, this shift from the general
to the diverse and particular is quite recent. Consider another line of stills: the back-lit, soft-
focus portraits of the first and second generations of great movie stars. There is a degree of
romantic unparticularity in the face of each one, as if they were communal dream-projections
of society at large. Only in the specialized genres of westerns, farces and gangster movies
were stars allowed to have odd, knobby cadaverous faces. The hero as loner belonged to
history or the underworld: he spoke from the perimeter of society, reminding us of its
dangerous edges.
The stars of the last decade have looked quite different. Soft-focus photography has gone, to
be replaced by a style which searches out warts and bumps, and emphasizes the uniqueness
not the generality of the face. Voices, too, are strenuously idiosyncratic; whines, stammers and
low rumbles are exploited as features of “star quality”. Instead of romantic heroes and
heroines, we have a brutalist, hard-edged style in which isolation and egotism are assumed as
natural social conditions.
In the movies, as in the city, the sense of stable hierarchy has become increasingly exhausted;
we no longer live in a world where we can all share the same values, and the same heroes. (It
is doubtful whether this world, so beloved of nostalgia moralists, ever existed; but lip-service
was paid to it, the pretence, at last, was kept up.) The isolate and the eccentric push towards
the centre of the stage; their fashions and mannerisms are presented as having as good a claim
to the limelight and the future as those of anyone else. In the crowd on the underground
platform, one may observe a honeycomb of fully-worked-out worlds, each private, exclusive,
bearing little comparison with its nearest neighbor. What is prized in one is despised in
another. There are no clear rules about how one is supposed to manage one’s body, dress, talk,
or think. Though there are elaborate protocols and etiquettes among particular cults and
groups within the city, they subscribe to no common standard.
For the new arrival, this disordered abundance is the city’s most evident and alarming quality.
He feels as if he has parachuted into a funfair of contradictory imperatives. There are so many
people he might become, and a suit of clothes, a make of car, and a brand of cigarettes, will go
some way towards turning him into a personage even before he has discovered who that
personage is. Personal identity has always been deeply rooted in property, but hitherto the
relationship has been a simple one – a question of buying what you could afford, and leaving
your wealth to announce your status. In the modern city, there are so many things to buy, such
a quantity of different kinds of status, that the choice and its attendant anxieties have created a
new pornography of state.
The leisure pages of the Sunday newspapers, fashion magazines, TV plays, popular novels,
cookbooks, window displays all nag at the nerve of our uncertainty and snobbery. Should we
like American cars, hard-rock hamburger joints, Bauhaus chairs…? Literature and art are
promoted as personal accessories, the paintings of Mondrian or the novels of Samuel Beckett
“go” with certain styles like matching handbags. There is in the city a creeping imperialism of
taste, in which more and more commodities are made over to being mere expressions of
personal identity. The piece of furniture, the pair of shoes, the book, the film, are important
not so much in themselves but for what they communicate about their owners; and ownership
is stretched to include what one likes or believes in as well as what one can buy.
1. What does the writer say about advertisements in the first paragraph?
A. They often depict people that most other people would not care to be like.
( depict people who wouldn’t be liked)
B. The pictures in them accurately reflect the way that some people really live
C. Certain kinds are considered more effective in cities than others. ( effectiveness varied)
D. The way in which some of them are worded is cleverer than it might appear. ( cleverer
worded)
2. What does a “femme fatale” refer to?
A. a beautiful woman who spends her time enjoying herself
B. a gorgeous woman who realizes most men’s dream
C. a potential good wife
D. an attractive woman who may bring unhappiness to men
3. The word “facetious” is closest in meaning to _____.
A. flippant B. prevalent C. impudent D. complacent
4. The writer says that if you look at a line of advertisements on a tube train, it is clear that
_____.
A. city dwellers have very diverse ideas about what image they would like to have
B. some images in advertisements have a general appeal that others lack
C. city dwellers are more influenced by images on advertisements than other people are
D. some images are intended to be representative of everyone’s aspirations
5. What does the writer imply about portraits of old movie stars?
A. They reflected an era in which people felt basically safe.
B. They made people feel that their own faces were rather unattractive.
C. They tried to disguise the less attractive features of their subjects.
D. Most people did not think they were accurate representations of the stars in them.
6. What does the writer suggest about the stars of the last decade?
A. Most people accept that they are not typical of society as a whole.
B. They make an effort to speak in a way that may not be pleasant on the ear.
C. Some of them may be uncomfortable about the way they come across.
D. They make people wonder whether they should become more selfish.
7. The writer uses the crowd on an underground platform to exemplify his belief that
_____.
A. no one in a city has strict attitudes towards the behavior of others
B. no single attitude to life is more common than another in a city
C. people in cities would like to have more in common with each other
D. views of what society was like in the past are often accurate
8. The writer implies that new arrivals in a city may _____.
A. acquire a certain image without understanding what that involves
B. underestimate the importance of wealth
C. decide that status is of little importance
D. change the image they wish to have too frequently
9. The novels of Samuel Beckett is an example of _____.
A. classic literature works that make their owners feel superior to other people
B. literature works of high artistic value
C. possessions that show owners’ identity
D. what is wanted by the majority in the society
10. What point does the writer make about city dwellers in the final paragraph?
A. They are unsure as to why certain things are popular with others.
B. They are keen to be the first to appreciate new styles.
C. They want to acquire more and more possessions.
D. They are aware that judgments are made about them according to what they buy.
Các bạn giúp mình bài đọc này với ạ
Mình làm rồi, check key mà không biết chỗ sai ở đâu mà sửa
Đây là key ạ
1.B 2.D 3.A 4.A 5.A 6.B 7.B 8.A 9.C 10.D
