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 44.
The modem comic strip started out as ammunition in a newspaper was between giants of the American press in the late nineteenth century. The first full-color comic strip appeared in January 1894 in the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. The first regular weekly full-color comic supplement, similar to today's Sunday funnies, appeared two years later, in William Randolph Hearst's rival New York paper, the Morning Journal.
Both were immensely popular, and publishers realized that supplementing the news with comic relief boosted the sale of papers. The Morning Journal started another feature in 1896, the "Yellow Kid," the first continuous comic character in the United States, whose creator, Richard Outcault, had been lured away from the World by the ambitious Hearst. The "Yellow Kid" was in many ways a pioneer. Its comic dialogue was the strictly urban farce that came to characterize later strips, and it introduced the speech balloon inside the strip, usually placed above the characters' heads.
The first strip to incorporate all the elements of later comics was Rudolph Dirks's "Katzenjammer Kids", based on Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz, a European satire of the nineteenth century. The "Kids" strip, first published in 1897, served as the prototype for future American strips. It contained not only speech balloons, but a continuous cast of characters, and was divided into small regular panels that did away with the larger panoramic scenes of the earliest comics.
Newspaper syndication played a major role in spreading the popularity of comic strips throughout the country. Though weekly colored comics came first, daily black-and-white strips were not far behind. They first appeared in the Chicago American in 1904. It was followed by many imitators, and by 1915 black-and-white comic strips had become a staple of daily newspaper; around the country.
The passage suggests that comic strips were popular for which of the following reasons?
A. They provided a break from serious news stories
B. Readers enjoyed the unusual drawings
C. Readers could identify with the characters
D. They were about real-life situations
Đáp án A
Thông tin: Both were immensely popular, and publishers realized that supplementing the news with comic relief boosted the sale of papers.
Dịch nghĩa: Cả hai đều vô cùng phổ biến, và các nhà xuất bản nhận ra rằng bổ sung các tin tức với truyện tranh giải trí thúc đẩy việc bán các tờ báo.
Như vậy truyện tranh có tính giải trí, và điều đó khiến nó phổ biến đến mức khiến lượng bán báo tăng lên nhiều. Phương án A. They provided a break from serious news stories = chúng cung cấp một sự giải lao từ những tin tức nghiêm túc, là phương án chính xác nhất.
B. Readers enjoyed the unusual drawings = Độc giả rất thích những bản vẽ khác thường.
Không có thông tin như vậy trong bài.
C. Readers could identify with the characters = Độc giả có thể đồng cảm với các nhân vật.
Không có thông tin như vậy trong bài.
D. They were about real-life situations = Chúng là về những tình huống thực tế cuộc sống.
Không có thông tin như vậy trong bài.