Đề thi học sinh giỏi môn Tiếng Anh lớp 12 tỉnh Thanh Hóa năm 2013 - 2014

People are often put off meditation by what they see as its many mystical associations. Yet meditation is a (31. STRAIGHT) _____ technique which merely involves sitting and resting the mind. In addition to its (32. SIMPLE) ______, meditation offers powerful help in the battle against stress. Hundreds of studies have shown that meditation, when undertaken in a principled way, can (33. REDUCTION) ______ hypertension which is related to stress in the body. Research has proved that certain types of meditation can (34. SUBSTANCE) ______ decrease key stress symptoms such as (35. ANXIOUS) ______and irritability. In fact, those who practise meditation with any (36. REGULAR) ______ see their doctors less and spend, on average, seventy per cent fewer days in hospital. They are said to have more stamina, a happier (37. DISPOSE)______ and even enjoy better relationships. When you learn to meditate, your teacher will give you a personal 'mantra' or word which you use every time you practise the technique and which is (38. SUPPOSE) ______ chosen according to your needs. Initial classes are taught (39. INDIVIDUAL) ______ but subsequent classes usually consist of a group of students and take place over a period of about four days. The aim is to learn how to slip into a deeper state of (40.CONSCIOUS) ______ for twenty minutes a day. The rewards speak for themselves.

English spelling Why does English spelling have a reputation for being difficult? English was first written down when Christian monks came to England in Anglo-Saxon (41) ______ .They used the 23 letters of Latin to write down the sounds of Anglo-Saxon speech as they heard it. However, English has a (42) ______ range of basic sounds (over 40) than Latin. The alphabet was too small, and so combinations of letters were needed to (43) ______ the different sounds. Inevitably, there were inconsistencies in the way that letters were combined.

With the Norman invasion of England, the English language was put (44) ______ risk. English survived, but the spelling of many English words changed to follow French patterns, and many French words were (45) ______ into the language. The result was more irregularity.

When the printing press was (46) ______ in the fifteenth century, many early printers of English texts spoke other first languages. They (47) ______ little effort to respect English spelling. Although one of the short-term effects of printing was to produce a number of variant spellings, in the long term it created fixed spellings. People became used to seeing words spelt in the same way. Rules were (48) ______ and dictionaries were put together which printers and writers could refer to. However, spoken English was not fixed and continued to change slowly - just as it still does now. Letters that were sounded in the Anglo-Saxon period, like the 'k' in 'knife', now became (49) ______. Also, the pronunciation of vowels then had (50) _____ in common with how they sound now, but the way they are spelt hasn't changed.

Because of the recent growth in air travel, airports have become more than ever before symbols of international importance. They therefore have (51.______) look good and are frequently designed by well-known architects. In (52.______) to this, competition and customer demand mean that (53. ______) generally have to have impressive facilities nowadays. For instance, there are (54. ______) lounges, where passengers can wait before their (55. ______) takes off, luxurious restaurants, shopping areas and banks. Good road and rail connections (56. ______) nearby towns and cities are also essential, with large (57. _____) of people needing to get to and from the airport quickly and effectively. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find land on which to build airports. One reason for this is that aircraft, (58. ______) improvements in engine design, are still very noisy, and need a considerable amount of space in which to (59. ______) and take off. This of course means that crowded residential areas need to be avoided, so, unluckily, travellers often find that the airport they need to use might be located (60. ______) an inconvenient distance from the city.

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.