Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks.
Rock carvings suggest that Stone Age people were hunting whales for food as early as 2,200 B.C. Such _____(41) hunting is still practised today in a number of ______(42) including the Inuit people of Greenland and North America.
Whaling became big______ (43) from the seventeenth century as the _______(44) for whale bone and whale oil rose, and the humpback and sperm whales were hunted in increasingly large numbers. ________(45) just as stocks of these species began to fall, the explosive harpoon gun was ______(46) . This weapon, together with the development of steam-powered ships, enabled the whalers to hunt the fast moving fin and blue whales.
In 1905, the whaling ______(47) moved to the waters of Antarctica. The introduction of massive factory ships enabled the whales to be processed at sea. As a result. the blue whale had ________(48) disappeared by the I95os. In 1946, the International Whaling Commission was established to maintain the declining whale populations. Quotas were set but ____(49) were often ignored and the numbers continued to fall. Hunting of many species continued until 1986 when the IWC finally responded to international________(50) and a ban on commercial whaling was introduced.
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.
Pottery is the name given to all kinds of pots and utensils made from clay and other minerals when they have been “fired”, which is hardened by heat in the potter’s kiln. Articles made of pottery includes plates, cups and saucers, cooking dishes, wall and floor tiles, chemical storage jars, bathroom fittings, filters, drain pipes, electrical insulators and ornaments for the home.
Pottery is one of the oldest crafts, which began to be practised as soon as man learned to control fires. and long before the melting of metals. It enabled him from very early times to make vessels for storing and cooking food, for carrying water, and for ritual burial purposes. Early vessels were shaped by hand and probably “fired" in a big bonfire by covering them over with dried grass and dead branches, which were then set alight.
A great advance in pottery followed the invention of the potter’s wheel and the kiln. lt is not certainly known where the potter’s wheel was first used, but it is thought that by about 3,500 B.C. potters in Central Asia were using some kind of wheel. Fromthere, its use spread west and east to Egypt, Crete, China, and then to ancient Greece and Rome.
At first, the wheel was nothing more than a small disc, turned on a pivot by hand, but later it was improved by raising it and providing it with larger circular plat form near the ground as well, which could be rotated by the potter with his feet. Such a wheel was probably in use in Egypt by about 200 B.C., though this is only conjecture: but it was certainly in use in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. ln the eighteen century, however, the potter’s wheel was improved so that it could be worked by a treadle, or turned by an assistant. Modern potter’s wheels are powered driven.
There are three principle ways in which articles may be made of pottery. They may be simply shaped by hand. They may be thrown on the potter‘s wheel and shaped against the spin with the finger or some scraping tool. Thirdly, the wet clay may be put in a pre-shaped “form” of plaster.
After the pots have been made, they are slowly baked in the kiln. This produces chemical changes in the clay which have a hardening effect. The time taken for firing pottery varies from 24 hours to as long as 2 weeks.
Notes:
- kiln (n): lò nung
- potter (n): thợ gốm