Đề thi thử THPT Quốc gia năm 2017 môn Tiếng Anh có đáp án

English has without a (31) ____ become the second language of Europe and the world. European countries which have most (32) ____ assimilated English into daily life are England's neighbors in Northern Europe: Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and the rest of Scandinavia.

The situation is so (33) ____ that any visitor to the Netherlands will soon be aware of the pressure of English on daily life: television, radio and print bring it into every home and the schoolyard conversation of children; advertisers use it to (34) ____ up their message, journalists take refuge in it when their home-bred skills fail them. Increasingly one hears the (35) ____ that Dutch will give way to English as the national tongue within two or three generations.

ARE HUMAN BEINGS GETTING SMARTER?

Do you think you're smarter than your parents and grandparents? According to James Flynn, a professor at a New Zealand university, you are! Over the course of the last century, people who have taken IQ tests have gotten increasingly better scores-on average, three points better for every decade that has passed. This improvement is known as "the Flynn effect," and scientists want to know what is behind it.

IQ tests and other similar tests are designed to measure general intelligence rather than knowledge. Flynn knew that intelligence is partly inherited from our parents and partly the result of our environment and experiences, but the improvement in test scores was happening too quickly to be explained by heredity. So what was happening in the 20th century that was helping people achieve higher scores on intelligence tests?

Scientists have proposed several explanations for the Flynn effect. Some suggest that the improved test scores simply reflect an increased exposure to tests in general. Because we take so many tests, we learn test-taking techniques that help us perform better on any test. Others have pointed to better nutrition since it results in babies being born larger, healthier, and with more brain development than in the past. Another possible explanation is a change in educational styles, with teachers encouraging children to learn by discovering things for themselves rather than just memorizing information. This could prepare people to do the kind of problem solving that intelligence tests require.

Flynn limited the possible explanations when he looked carefully at the test data and discovered that the improvement in scores was only on certain parts of the IQ test. Test takers didn't do better on the arithmetic or vocabulary sections of the test; they did better on sections that required a special kind of reasoning and problem solving. For example, one part of the test shows a set of abstract shapes, and test-takers must look for patterns and connections between them and decide which shape should be added to the set.

According to Flynn, this visual intelligence improves as the amount of technology in our lives increases. Every time you play a computer game or figure out how to program a new cell phone, you are exercising exactly the kind of thinking and problem solving that helps you do well on one kind of intelligence test. So are you really smarter than your parents? In one very specific way, you may be.

Learning means acquiring knowledge or developing the ability to perform new behaviors. It is common to think of learning as something that takes place in school, but much of human learning occurs outside the classroom, and people continue to learn throughout their lives.

Even before they enter school, young children learn to walk, to talk, and to use their hands to manipulate toys, food, and other objects. They use all of their senses to learn about the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells in their environments. They learn how to interact with their parents, siblings, friends, and other people important to their world. When they enter school, children learn basic academic subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. They also continue to learn a great deal outside the classroom. They learn which behaviors are likely to be rewarded and which are likely to be punished. They learn social skills for interacting with other children. After they finish school, people must learn to adapt to the many major changes that affect their lives, such as getting married, raising children, and finding and keeping a job.

Because learning continues throughout our lives and affects almost everything we do, the study of learning is important in many different fields. Teachers need to understand the best ways to educate children. Psychologists, social workers, criminologists, and other human-service workers need to understand how certain experiences change people's behaviors. Employers, politicians, and advertisers make use of the principles of learning to influence the behavior of workers, voters, and consumers.

Learning is closely related to memory, which is the storage of information in the brain. Psychologists who study memory are interested in how the brain stores knowledge, where this storage takes place, and how the brain later retrieves knowledge when we need it. In contrast, psychologists who study learning are more interested in behavior and how behavior changes as a result of a person's experiences.

There are many forms of learning, ranging from simple to complex. Simple forms of learning involve a single stimulus. A stimulus is anything perceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. In a form of learning known as classical conditioning, people learn to associate two stimuli that occur in sequence, such as lightning followed by thunder. In operant conditioning, people learn by forming an association between a behavior and its consequences (reward or punishment). People and animals can also learn by observation – that is, by watching others perform behaviors. More complex forms of learning in clued learning languages, concepts, and motor skills.