Đề 16

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 from 31 to 35.

On March 15, Dunes View Middle School held a contest for school bands. Student bands tried  out for the opportunity to perform at the school picnic, which will be held at the end of June. The winner of the contest was the band called Four Square. "We're very proud that we won the contest  and are excited to perform at the picnic," says Peter Zandt, who plays the guitar in the band. "And     since we hope to perform someday at other local places, like restaurants and parks, this will be  a  great first step."

The contest was the creation of music teacher Mr. Lopez and drama teacher Ms. Cho. The two thought of the idea while discussing recent years' school picnics. "The picnic is one of the biggest events of the year, but it has become a bit formulaic ," said Ms. Cho. "The activities are the same every year. We thought that a performance by a student band would make the school picnic more interesting and fun." Mr. Lopez, Ms. Cho, and three other teachers judged the contest, which took place  in the gym. Eight student bands signed up to audition. The bands varied in their musical forms: there  were several rock bands, a folk band, and even a jazz band. "I'm disappointed that my band didn't win,

but I think the judges made the right choice," says student Marisol Varga, a member of the folk trio called The Bell Girls. "Four Square is really excellent."

To see if the bands could present a wide range of musical skills, the teachers asked them  each to prepare two songs: one song with original words, and another in which students played instrumental music only. The judges finally chose the band Four Square as the winner of the contest. Four Square is a rock band with an unusual twist: it includes a violin player! The members of Four Square write their own songs and practice three times a week after school. Students and teachers agreed that the band competition was a  big success. All are looking forward  to the school picnic in June.

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 from 36 to 42.

Translators and interpreters for tech jobs of the future are expected to be one of the fastest growing occupations in the nation, according to a just released survey by Vietnamworks. Almost all positions for programmers, application developers, database and network administrators, engineers, designers, architects, scientists, technicians, and tech support will require bilingual or multilingual fluency. In just the last two years the demand for tech professionals with foreign language skills has increased more than two and one-half fold, said the survey, and the uptick shows no signs of abating anytime soon. Roughly 400,000 jobs are expected to open for interpreters (who focus on spoken language) and translators (who focus on written language) in the tech segment, between 2017 and 2020, says Tran Anh Tuan. Tuan, who works for the Centre for Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information in Ho Chi Minh City doesn't include other industries in his prediction,

which are also recruiting ferociously for more people with these same language skills.

While that claim might seem a bit overblown (and amounts to little more than a guess by Tuan), it is clear that innovative technologies like robotics, 3D printing, drones, artificial intelligence   and virtual reality will create major upheavals in all sorts of labor markets, not just technology over     the next few years. In the last month alone, most every job posted on employment websites throughout Vietnam included the word bilingual. Far higher salaries go to people who work in high    tech positions and can speak a foreign language such as English in addition to Vietnamese, says Tran Quang Anh from the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology.

Unfortunately, the surveys show that most graduating Vietnamese students are unable to do more than understand a few basic phrases of foreign languages, and practically none of them can speak any foreign language coherently, The good paying jobs with high salaries and benefits are  only available to  translators and interpreters who specialize in  high tech jobs, says Anh. But it's  not just English— graduates are needed with fluency in  middle eastern languages like Arabic, Farsi and Pashto (Afghani) as well as German, Japanese and Korean to name just a few. Spanish is  also in high demand in Vietnam, primarily because it is the second most common language in the US after English.

A recent tech expo in Hanoi sponsored by Vietnamworks and the Navigos Group attracted nearly 4,000 young tech graduates and recruiters from 14 leading companies looking to fill job  vacancies with skilled bilingual workers. The job applicants were young and industrious, said the recruiters. However, missing were candidates with the requisite language skills and most  lacked  basic 'soft skills' such as written and verbal communication abilities to effectively communicate  even in their native Vietnamese language.

Notably, the recruiters said they considered language abilities and soft skills just as, if not more important, than academic ability. Yet virtually all the prospective academically qualified employees lacked even the most basic of interpersonal communication abilities.