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.
The modern comic strip started out as ammunition in a newspapaer war 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’ 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 baloon 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 baloons, but a continuous cast of characters, and was divided into small regular panels that did away with the larger panoramic scenes of earlier 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. The 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 newspapers around the country.
The passage suggests that comic strips were popular for which of the following reasons?
A. Readers enjoyed the unusual drawings
B. They were about real-life situations
C. Readers could identify with the characters
D. They provided a break from serious news stories
Đáp án D.
Câu hỏi: “Đoạn văn đã cho thấy truyện tranh được phổ biến vì những lí do nào sau đây?”
A. Readers enjoyed the unusual drawings: Ngược đọc thích những bản vẽ khác thường – Sai, không có thông tin.
B. They were about real-life situations: Chúng nói về những tình huống thực tế trong cuộc sống – Sai, không phải lí do chính khiến cho truyện tranh được phổ biến.
C. Readers could identify with the characters: Người đọc có thể đồng cảm với các nhân vật – Sai, không có thông tin.
D. They provided a break from serious news stories: Chúng đem lại sự giải lao từ những tin tức quan trọng - Đúng
Vì sao đáp án D đúng? Đoạn văn cho thấy sự bùng nổ của những mẩu truyện tranh mang ý nghĩa rất lớn với ngành báo chí. Nó không chỉ giúp thúc đẩy doanh số (đoạn 2) mà còn chiếm vai trò quan trọng, là một yếu tố không thể thiếu trong những tờ báo khắp cả nước (đoạn văn cuối). Những tờ báo thường có những mẩu tin tức quan trọng và căng thẳng, chính sự hài hước của những mẩu truyện tranh đã khiến cho chúng được phổ biến trong những tờ báo