15000 bài tập tách từ đề thi thử môn Tiếng Anh có đáp án (Phần 78)

It is commonly believed in the United States that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important.
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one's entire life.

Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught. For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.

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Students working for their first degree at university are called undergraduates. Then they take their degree we say they graduate, and then they are called graduates. If they continue studying at university after they have graduated, they are called post-graduates. Full-time university students spend all their free time studying. They have no other employment. Their course usually lasts for three or four years. Medical students have to follow a course lasting for six or seven years. Then they graduate as doctors. In Britain, full-time university students have three terms of about ten weeks in each year. During these terms they go to lectures or they study by themselves. Many students become members of academic societies and sports clubs and take part in their activities. Between the university terms they have vacations (or holiday periods). Their vacations are long, but of course they can use them to study at home.

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It is difficult to write rules that tell exactly when we should apologize, but it is not difficult to learn how. If we have done something to hurt someone’s feeling or if we have been impolite or rude, we should apologize. An apology indicates that we realize we have made a mistake, and we are sorry for it. It is a way of expressing our regret for something. When we apologize, we admit our wrongdoing, usually offer a reason for it, and express regret.

The simplest way to apologize is to say “I’m sorry”, but often that is not enough. Let’s take a common situation. Mario is late for class and enters the classroom, interrupting the teacher in the middle of the class. What does he do? The most polite action is usually to take a seat as quietly as possible and apologize later. But if the teacher stops and waits for him to say something, he could apologize simply “I’m sorry I’m late”, ask permission to take his seat, and sit down. Naturally, more than this, a reason for the tardiness, is needed, but this is not the time or the place for it because he has already caused one interruption and doesn’t need to make it any longer or worse than it already is.

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On the fourth Thursday in November, in houses around the United States, families get together for a feast, or a large meal. Almost all families eat turkey and cranberry sauce for this meal, and have pumpkin pie for dessert. This feast is part of a very special day, the holiday of Thanksgiving.

In 1620 the Pilgrims made a difficult trip across the ocean from England. They landed in what is now Massachusetts. In England the Pilgrims had not been allowed to freely practice their religion. So they went to the New World in search of religious freedom.

The Pilgrims' first winter was very hard. Almost half the group died of cold, hunger and disease. But the Indians of Massachusetts taught the Pilgrims to plant corn, to hunt and to fish. When the next fall came, the Pilgrims had plenty of food. They were thankful to God and the Indians and had a feast to give thanks. They invited the Indians to join them. This was the first Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving became a national holiday many years later because of the effort of a woman named Sarah Hale. For forty years Sarah Hale wrote to each president and asked for a holiday of Thanksgiving. At last she was successful. In 1863 President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a holiday.

How much is Thanksgiving today like the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving? In many ways they are different. For example, historians think that the Pilgrims ate deer, not turkey. The idea of Thanksgiving, though, is very much the same: Thanksgiving is a day on which we celebrate and give thanks.

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As working women continue to receive better and better wages, housewives still work at home without receiving pay – checks. Should a woman who works at home, doing the housework and caring for children, be paid for her service? In a 1986 study at Cornell University, sociologists found that the value of the services of a housewife averaged $ 11,600 a year. This rate was based on a family composed of a husband, wife, and three young children. The $ 11,600 is what the husband would have to pay if he hired others to take over his wife’s household chores. The researchers concluded that it would be fair for husbands to pay wives according to federal guidelines for minimum wages.

Another plan for rewarding women who work at home has been suggested by a former Secretary of Health and Human Services. He says that full-time housewives should be allowed to pay social security taxes, with their employers contributing part of the payment. He feels that the present system is unfair. He said, “ If you stay at home and raise a family, nobody will give you credit for it.”

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It is a characteristic of human nature that people like to get together and have fun, and people live during America's frontier days were no exception. However, because life was hard and the necessities of day-to-day living took up their time, it was common for recreation to be combined with activities necessary for survival. One example of such a form of recreation was logrolling. Many frontier areas were heavily wooded, and in order to settle an area it was necessary to move the trees. A settler could cut down the trees alone, but help was needed to move the cut trees. After a settler had cut a bunch of trees, he would then invite is neighbours over for a logrolling. A logrolling is a community event where families got together for a combination of work and fun. The women would bring food and have a much needed and infrequent opportunity to relax and chat with friends, the children would play together exuberantly, and the men would hold lively competitions that involved rolling logs from place to place as quickly as possible. This was a day of fun for everyone involved, but as its foundation was the need to clear the land.

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People travel for a lot of reasons: Some tourists go to see battlefields or religious shrines. Others are looking for culture, or simply want to have their pictures taken in front of famous places. But most European tourists are looking for a sunny beach to lie on.

Northern Europeans are willing to pay a lot of money and put up with a lot of inconveniences for the sun because they have so little of it. Residents of cities like London, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam spend a tot of their winter in the dark because the days are so short, and much of the rest of the year in the rain. This is the reason why the Mediterranean has always attracted them. Every summer, more than 25 million people travel to Mediterranean resorts and beaches for their vacation. They all come for the same reason, sun!

The huge crowds mean lots of money for the economies of Mediterranean countries. Italy’s 30,000 hotels are booked solid every summer. And 13 million people camp out on French beaches, parks and roadsides. Spain’s long sandy coastline attracts more people than anywhere else. 37 million tourists visit yearly, or one tourist for every person living in Spain.

But there are signs that the area is getting more tourists than it can handle. The Mediterranean is already one of the most polluted seas on earth. And with increased tourism, it’s getting worse. The French can’t figure out what to do with all the garbage left by campers around St. Tropez. And in many places, swimming is dangerous because of pollution.

None of this, however, is spoiling anyone’s fun. The Mediterranean gets more popular every year with tourists. Obviously, they don’t go there for clean water and solitude. They tolerate traffic jams and seem to like crowded beaches. They don’t even mind the pollution. No matter how dirty the water is, the coastline still looks beautiful. And as long as the sun shines, it’s still better than sitting in the cold rain in Berlin, London, or Oslo.

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People used to know more or less how their children would live. Now things are changing so quickly that they don’t even know what their own lives will be like in a few years’ time. What follows is not science fiction. It is how experts see the future.

          You are daydreaming behind the steering wheel; is it too dangerous? No! That’s no problem because you have it on automatic pilot, and with its hi-tech computers and cameras, your car “know” how to get you home safe and sound.

          What is for lunch? In the old days you used to stop off to buy a hamburger or a pizza. Now you use your diagnostic machine to find out which foods your body needs. If your body needs more vegetables and less fat, your food-preparation machine makes you a salad.

          After lunch, you go down the hall to your home office. Here you have everything you need to do your work. Thanks to your information screen and your latest generation computer, you needn’t go to the office any more. The information screen shows an urgentmessage from a co-worker in Brazil. You can instantly send back a reply to him and go on to deal with other matters.

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Herman Melville, an American author best known today for his novel Moby Dick, was actually more popular during his lifetime for some of his other works. He traveled extensively and used the knowledge gained during his travels as the basis for his early novels. In 1837, at the age of eighteen, Melville signed as a cabin boy on a merchant ship that was to sail from his Massachusetts home to Liverpool, England. His experiences on this trip served as a basis for the novel Redburn (1849). In 1841 Melville set out on a whaling ship headed for the South Seas. After jumping ship in Tahiti, he wandered around the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. This South Sea island sojourn was a backdrop to the novel Omoo (1847). After three years away from home, Melville joined up with a U.S. naval frigate that was returning to the eastern United States around Cape Horn. The novel White-Jacket (1850) describes this lengthy voyage as a navy seaman.

With the publication of these early adventure novels, Melville developed a strong and loyal following among readers eager for his tales of exotic places and situations. However, in 1851, with the publication of Moby Dick, Melville's popularity started to diminish. Moby Dick, on one level the saga of the hunt for the great white whale, was also a heavily symbolic allegory of the heroic struggle of man against the universe. The public was not ready for Melville's literary metamorphosis from romantic adventure to philosophical symbolism. It is ironic that the novel that served to diminish Melville's popularity during his lifetime is the one for which he is best known today.

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The handling and delivery of mail has always been a serious business, underpinned by the trust of the public in requiring timeliness, safety, and confidentiality. After early beginnings using horseback and stagecoach, and although cars and trucks later replaced stagecoaches and wagons, the Railway Mail Service still stands as one of America’s most resourceful and exciting postal innovations. This service began in 1832, but grew slowly until the Civil War. Then from 1862, by sorting the mail on board moving trains, the Post Office Department was able to decentralize its operations as railroads began to crisscross the nation on a regular basis, and speed up mail delivery. This service lasted until 1974. During peak decades of service, railway mail clerks handled 93% of all non-local mail and by 1905 the service had over 12,000 employees.

Railway Post Office trains used a system of mail cranes to exchange mail at stations without stopping. As a train approached the crane, a clerk prepared the catcher arm which would then snatch the incoming mailbag in the blink of an eye. The clerk then booted out the outgoing mailbag. Experienced clerks were considered the elite of the Postal Service’s employees, and spoke with pride of making the switch at night with nothing but the curves and feel of the track to warn them of an upcoming catch. They also worked under the greatest pressure and their jobs were considered to be exhausting and dangerous. In addition to regular demands of their jobs they could find themselves the victims of train wrecks and robberies.

As successful as it was, “mail-on-the-fly” still had its share of glitches. If they hoisted the train’s catcher arm too soon, they risked hitting switch targets, telegraph poles or semaphores, which would rip the catcher arm off the train. Too late, and they would miss an exchange.