15000 bài tập tách từ đề thi thử môn Tiếng Anh có đáp án (Phần 9)

The quality of life these days is something most of us take for (1) _______It takes some radically different experience to bring this fact home to people. In my case, it was spending three weeks aboard a yacht with twelve other people, competing in a major sailing race. (2) _______I was officially a guest, it was made clear to me from the start that there was to be no room for passengers, and that I’d have to (3) _______my weight.

 For the first few nights, none of us was able to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time before being rudely awoken by an aggressive command. Then we’d do physically exhausting work in total darkness. Every few minutes we’d be completely soaked to the (4) _______by a large wave we couldn’t see coming. I shared sleeping quarters with six other women, with barely enough room to stretch my legs. Soon I found myself (5) _______for my comfortable sheets back home, a hot chocolate and a warm bath.

LIVING A HEALTHIER LIFE

Keeping fit and healthy may seem difficult, but there are a few easy-to-follow guidelines. Firstly, a balanced diet is absolutely essential. This (1)_______selecting food that is low in salt and sugar. Experts recommend reducing the amount of fat in your diet, as too much can lead to heart problems. They also suggest increasing the (2)_______of high fiber food we eat. This comes in the form of fresh fruit, vegetables, whole meal bread and pasta. As well as being packed with vitamins and minerals, they are delicious too. Secondly, it’s important to fit exercise into your daily (3)_______This can be done by simply walking as much as possible and climbing stairs instead of taking the lift. Exercise is necessary to maintain a healthy body, as well as increasing energy levels and (4)_______you feel generally fitter and happier. Finally, staying relaxed is important for good health. Too much stress can lead to a variety of illnesses, from headaches to high blood pressure. (5)_______possible, do things you enjoy and treat yourself occasionally. So the message is simple- enjoy yourself but learn to respect your body too. It’s all a question of getting the balance right.

Choosing clothes can be difficult. Some people want to be fashionable, but they don’t want to look exactly like everybody else. Not all clothes are (1)_________ for work or school, perhaps because they are not formal enough, or simply not comfortable. It is easy to buy the (2)_________  size, and find that your trousers are too tight, especially if you are a little bit overweight. Very (3)_________ clothes make you feel slim, but when they have shrunk in the washing machine, then you have the same problem! If you buy light cotton clothes, then they might not be (4)_________ enough for winter. If your shoes are not waterproof and if you aren’t (5)_________  for the cold, you might look good, but feel terrible!

The future of the African elephant depends on man. No (1)_________ can human beings and wild animals live in harmony throughout vast area of the continent as was possible in days gone by, for man’s needs have increased as well as his numbers. There are regions, such as the Congo forests and the equatorial Sudan, (2)_________ the old relationship may remain for a few more years or even generations, but in general it has gone. Conservation, if it is to be effective, should be a positive, constructive policy, and it is wishful thinking to imagine otherwise, (3)_________ in the case of the elephant. And this is not yet true of the whole of Africa, it soon will be, for the increase in the human population is almost universal. Where human beings and wild animals find themselves in competition with each other, the animals will (4)_________ Even if there appears to be enough room for both, man will not tolerate long a situation in which elephants and other (5)_________ make even occasional raids on his fields of food or economic crops. For many years this has been a major cause of conflicting interests and one of the reasons why so many elephants have been shot to control their numbers.

Many people love boats. Going out on the water on a warm summer day is a lot of (1) _______. (2) _______ , different people like different kinds of boats. Two of the most popular kinds of boat are sailboats and speedboats. Sailboats use the (3) _______to give them power. They only have small engines. In contrast, speedboats have large engines and go very fast. Furthermore, speedboats are usually not as (4) _______ as sailboats. Speedboats are small so that they can go fast. Sailboats, on the other hand, are big so that they are more comfortable. ( 5) _______, sailboats can travel into the ocean, but this would be very dangerous in a speedboat. You can only use speedboats on rivers or lakes.

FAMILY LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES

Family life in the United States is changing. Fifty or sixty years ago, the wife was called a “housewife”. She cleaned, cooked, and cared for the children. The husband earned the money for the family. He was usually out working all day. He came home tired in the evening, so he did not do much housework. And he did not see the children very much, except on weekends.

These days, however, more and more women work outside the home. They cannot stay with the children all day. They, too, come home tired in the evening. They do not want to spend the evening cooking dinner and cleaning up. They do not have time to clean the house and do the laundry. So who is going to do the housework now? Who is going to take care of the children?

Many families solve the problem of housework by sharing it. In these families, the husband and wife agree to do different jobs around the house, or they take turns doing each job. For example, the husband always cooks dinner and the wife always does the laundry. Or the wife cooks dinner on some nights and the husband cooks dinner on other nights.

Then there is the question of the children. In the past, many families got help with child care from grandparents. Now families usually do not live near their relatives. The grandparents are often too far away to help in a regular way. More often, parents have to pay for child care help. The help may be a babysitter or a day-care center. The problem with t his kind of help is the high cost. It is possible only for couples with jobs that pay well.

Parents may get another kind of help form the companies they work for. Many companies now let people with children work part-time. That way, parents can spend more time with their children. Some husbands may even stop working for a while to stay with the children. For these men there is a new word. they are called “househusbands”. In the USA more and more men are becoming househusbands every year.

These changes in the home mean changes in the family. Fathers can learn to understand their children better, and the children can get to know their fathers better. Husbands and wives may also find changes in their marriage. They, too, may have a better understanding of each other.

The nuclear family, consisting of a mother, father, and their children, may be more an American ideal than an American reality. Of course, the so-called traditional American family was always more varied than we had been led to believe, reflecting the very different racial, ethnic, class, and religious customs among different American groups.

The most recent government statistics reveal that only about one third of all current American families fit the traditional mold and another third consists of married couples who either have no children or have none still living at home. Of the final one third, about 20 percent of the total number of American households are single people, usually women over sixty-five years of age. A small percentage, about 3 percent of the total, consists of unmarried people who choose to live together; and the rest, about 7 percent are single, usually divorced parents, with at least one child. Today, these varied family types are typical, and therefore, normal. Apparently, many Americans are achieving supportive relationships in family forms other than the traditional one.

In the world today, particularly in the two most industrialized areas, North America and Europe, recycling is big news. People are talking about it, practicing it, and discovering new ways to be sensitive to the environment. Recycling means finding was to use products a second time. The motto of the recycling movement is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". The first step is to reduce garbage. In stores, a shopper has to buy products in blister packs, boxes and expensive plastic wrappings. A hamburger from a fast food restaurant comes in lots of packaging. usually paper, a box, and a bag. All that packaging is wasted resources. People should try to buy things that are wrapped simply, and to reuse cups and utensils. Another way to reduce waste is to buy high-quality products. When low quality appliances break, many customers throw them away and buy new ones - a loss of more resources and more energy. For example, if a customer buys a high-quality appliance that can be easily repaired, the manufacturer receives an important message. In the same way, if a customer chooses a product with less packaging, that customer sends an important message to the manufacturers. To reduce garbage, the throwaway must stop.

The second step is to reuse. It is better to buy juices and soft drinks in returnable bottles. After customers empty the bottles, they return them to the store. The manufacturers of the drinks collect the bottles, wash them, and then fill them again. The energy that is necessary to make new bottles is saved. In some parts of the world, returning bottles for money is a common practice. In those places, the garbage dumps have relatively little glass and plastic from throwaway bottles.

The third step is being environmentally sensitive is to recycle. Spent motor oil can be cleaned and used again. Aluminum cans are expensive to make. It takes the same amount of energy to make one aluminum can as it does to run a color TV set for three hours. When people collect and recycle aluminum (for new cans), they help save one of the world's precious resources.

An air pollutant is defined as a compound added directly or indirectly by humans to the atmosphere in such quantities as to affect humans, animals, vegetation, or materials adversely. Air pollution requires a very flexible definition that permits continuous change. When the first air pollution laws were established in England in the fourteenth century, air pollutants were limited to compounds that could be seen or smelled - a far cry from the extensive list of harmful substances known today. As technology has developed and knowledge of the health aspects of various chemicals has increased, the list of air pollutants has lengthened. In the future, even water vapor might be considered an air pollutant under certain conditions.

Many of the more important air pollutants, such as sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides, are found in nature. As the Earth developed, the concentration of these pollutants was altered by various chemical reactions; they became components in biogeochemical cycles. These serve as an air purification scheme by allowing the compounds to move from the air to the water or soil. On a global basis, nature's output of these compounds dwarfs that resulting from human activities.

However, human production usually occurs in a localized area, such as a city. In such a region, human output may be dominant and may temporarily overload the natural purification scheme of the cycles. The result is an increased concentration of noxious chemicals in the air. The concentrations at which the adverse effects appear will be greater than the concentrations that the pollutants would have in the absence of human activities. The actual concentration need not be large for a substance to be a pollutant; in fact, the numerical value tells us little until we know how much of an increase this represents over the concentration that would occur naturally in the area. For example, sulfur dioxide has detectable health effects at 0.08 parts per million (ppm), which is about 400 times its natural level. Carbon monoxide, however, has a natural level of 0.1 ppm and is not usually a pollutant until its level reaches about 15 ppm.

Long ago prehistoric man began to domesticate a number of wild plants and animals for his own use. This not only provided a more abundant food source but also allowed more people to live on a smaller plot of ground. We tend to forget that all of our present-day pets, livestock, and food plants were taken from the wild and developed into the forms we know today.

As centuries passed and human cultures evolved and blossomed, humans began to organise their knowledge of nature into the broad field of natural history. One aspect of early natural history concerned the use of plants for drugs and medicine. The early herbalists sometimes overworked their imaginations in this respect. For example, it was widely believed that a plant or part of a plant that resembles an internal organ would cure ailments of that organ. Thus, an extract made from a heartshaped leaf might be prescribed for a person suffering from heart problems.

Nevertheless, the overall contributions of these early observers provided the rudiments of our present knowledge of drugs and their uses.