Đề Ôn Thi Tốt Nghiệp THPT Tiếng Anh 2022 - Đề 4

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Does this sound like your life? Do you get the feeling that everything is accelerating? Not only are activities getting significantly quicker, but our assumptions are changing, too.
Take exercise: we used to think that the longer we spent on, say, a pleasurable walk in the countryside, the more good it did us. Not anymore. The new (34) ________ is for HIIT – short for High-Intensity Interval Training - (35) ________ just twelve minutes of very intense activity is supposed to be every bit as beneficial as conventional exercise. Get on that rowing machine and keep it short and sharp! It's supposed to get you fitter in a considerably shorter period of time than conventional exercise routines. Advocates of HIIT training claim that it can burn fat up to 50% more effectively than low-intensity exercise. They also maintain that it speeds up metabolism and so makes you burn more calories throughout the day. However, some recent research would appear to (36) ________ these claims.
(37) ________ have our personalities changed, too? Smartphones allow us to access information in no time at all. Research demonstrates that 80% of people will not wait more than 30 seconds for a video to load. A recent survey suggests we now walk 10% faster than we did ten years ago. It seems we even start to get annoyed after five seconds waiting for the car in front of us to start moving when the traffic light turns green. Overtime, we come to expect (38)_____ to be available infinitely more quickly than in the past. We have far less patience. We've forgotten how to slow down. Welcome to modern life.
(Adapted from Navigate by Mark Bartram and Kate Pickering)

It's Friday's night in Singapore and, once again, Madeline Tan (28) doesn't have a date. Like many women she feels ready to settle down as she approaches thirty. She has experienced more than a little family pressure about still being single at her age. And it is not only her family but also her government who are keen for her to marry and reproduce.
Living in one of the world's most successful economies, Madeline has a good education and the pick of jobs. Her salary as a radio executive means she can drive a luxury car and go shopping. Singapore's government believes that, to ensure continuous prosperity, future generations must become more intelligent. And it is concerned that female graduates – ideal for breeding this super-race – are staying single and childless. Singapore's men, on the other hand, are marrying less educated women. So, the government has launched a campaign to encourage the 'right' couples to get together.
Putting off marriage and parenthood is becoming more common in all industrialized nations. This is partly because high pressure jobs leave little time for socializing and meeting potential partners. In Singapore, the problem is made worse by cultural traditions. The sexes are not encouraged to mix during childhood or to date until after university.
Research scientists Kee-Chuan Goh (29) has never had a girlfriend. "There's a first time for everything.", he says. Like Madeline he has signed up with the SDU (Social Development Unit), the government's very own dating agency. It is open only to graduates, who sign up for five years, although most members are married within three.
Government-sponsored ads on prime-time TV aim to get the message across. In one, a young man sits on a park bench, sighing, “Where is my dream girl?” At the other end, a girl stares into space thinking, “Where is the man of my dreams?” They fail to notice each other and wander off, lonely. A voice-over warns “Why not reality? You could wait a lifetime for a dream.”

(Adapted from Clockwise Upper Intermediate by Jon Naunton)

Time has become a scarce commodity. Everyone wants more of it. The refrain 'If only I had more time!' echoes around the offices, kitchens and bedrooms of Britain; 'hurry sickness' is becoming the malaise of the new millennium. All over the world, people are working longer hours, struggling to fit more and more into every day. Symptoms include jabbing the 'door close' button on lift doors to save the two to four seconds required for the door to do it on its own, and an inability to do one thing at a time, so that every journey is a phone call opportunity.

Technology is helping to speed up the world: laptops, mobile phones (with a hands- free set so that you can do something else at the same time), pagers, remote controls. We live in an instant, insistent world. Adverts for energy-boosting drinks read: 'Having trouble keeping up with yourself?' We yearn for the lazy afternoons and days of yesteryear - but enthusiastically sign up for email, messaging services, language classes. Even time management courses. The result is parents with a lack of quality time to spend with their children, and surveys showing that working couples see less of each other than ever before and that rows over time spent on domestic labour or childcare top the list of marital discord. The idea of doing nothing has become terrifying, a sure sign of worthlessness.

Like any commodity that is scarce, time has become a battleground. In what is supposed to be the world of the consumer, firms steal time from customers. It is now perfectly acceptable to be asked to hold the instant the phone is answered. This saves the company time and money, but costs you time. We are engaged in a constant, subtle war over time. If the politics of class dominated the last century, the politics of time could dominate this one.

Of course, there is a class dimension to the rush culture. One of the biggest transitions of the past few decades has been to take the previous relationship between time and status - the rich had lots of time, the poor very little - and reverse it. While bankers in the City are now at their desks at 7am, in the good old days 'bankers' hours' meant 10am till 4pm with a decent lunch break. Moreover, to be seen to have time to spare is a sign of low status: arranging lunch, it is never done to be available too soon. Similarly, being late is moving from a sign of rudeness to a sign of status.

A two-tier time society is being built, with the money-rich, time-poor on one side, and the money-poor, time-rich on the other. The rich are working longer and longer hours in order to compete with each other. At the same time, they are employing others - cleaners, childminders, fast-food restaurant workers - in order to allow themselves to work all the time. Meanwhile, more and more of us are putting ourselves on the treadmill of constant activity, taking on an increasingly heavy workload, and never stopping for a moment to ask ourselves why.

(Adapted from Clockwise Advanced by Jon Naunton)