Đề thi vào lớp 10 môn Anh Chuyên - Sở GD&ĐT Cần Thơ năm 2026

THE MICROWAVE

The microwave oven has revolutionized the way food is cooked both at home and within the food 31.1 (PREPARE) industry. Although it met with the 31.2 (APPROVE) of many top chefs when it was invented, it is becoming an 31.3 (INCREASE) common sight in many restaurant kitchens. So what are its advantages? Firstly, there is a huge reduction in the amount of time needed to prepare each dish. Secondly, it is a very 31.4 (HYGIENE) way to cook, because microwaves are easy to clean, and the high temperatures involved 31.5 (MINIMUM) the risk of bacterial infection. Finally, microwave ovens are very 31.6 (ATTRACT) to the busy professional person who lives alone. The 31.7 (CONVENIENT) of a "microwave dinner" is 31.8 (RESIST) to someone who does not wish to waste their time sweating over a hot cooker!

Closing the Gender Gap

The benefits of educating girls are enormous. By empowering women within their families and communities, education enables women to contribute more fully to the social and economic development of their societies. A girl's education is also an investment in future generations; the more educated a mother is, the more likely are her children to be educated.

The educational level achieved by women has the most powerful influence on family size. The impact of education on family size is strongest and most consistent for women who have completed some secondary education. Educating girls is three times more likely than educating boys to lower family size. Education appears to affect family size in many ways. More educated women not only want fewer children than less educated ones, they are also more likely to marry and have children later, contributing to smaller family size.

Unfortunately, in many low-income countries, investment in education has not kept up with the rapidly increasing school-age population. Many developing countries cut social spending during the 1980s, putting more responsibility on families for financing education. Direct costs such as school fees, transportation, uniforms and books make it more difficult for poor families to educate all their children and parents in many countries give priority to sons.

Parents may see limited economic benefits in educating daughters. In many countries, girls are more likely than their brothers to be kept home to perform household chores, including caring for younger children. For these and other reasons, including early marriage and pregnancy, dropout rates for girls also tend to be higher than those for boys. In some cultures, parents are reluctant to allow their daughters to travel long distances to school, to be taught by male teachers and to enroll in schools without separate activities for girls.

Efforts to increase female enrolment levels must recognize the complex factors limiting educational opportunities for girls, as well as their continued enrolment once within the school system. Building more schools is often important to expand educational opportunities for girls. But especially in poor countries, more efficient use of existing resources for education could make possible the enrolment of more girls.

Hiring more female teachers and providing separate facilities for girls can help to overcome cultural barriers. In some countries, financial assistance such as scholarships for girls has also proved successful in encouraging parents to keep their daughters in school. Flexible school schedules can help to accommodate girls who have to work at home.

Providing access to good quality family planning services remains the most effective way to lower population growth rates in developing countries. Average family size and child death rates are lowest, however, in countries that combine strong family planning and health programs with high levels of education for women.

My first job

When I was 16, life seemed so unfair because just about everyone I knew had a weekend job and I didn't. They were lucky enough to have a "hook up". That's when someone like your parents, or a friend, gets one for you so you don't have to waste time reading through countless job advertisements. But then one of my mates got a Saturday job as a cleaner in a big hotel down the road from my house, so when there was an opening, I joined her. Now, I know what you're thinking. "I'm not cleaning for anybody". I was thinking the same. But it paid the usual hotel rate of £5 an hour and anyway, cleaning couldn't be that difficult, could it?

There was a lot more to the job than you might expect. First, I'd collect my cart from the storeroom and load it with all the supplies I needed a pile of fresh sheets and towels, as well as toiletries like shampoo and soap. Then I set to work on cleaning the rooms. I made the beds, vacuumed the carpets, cleaned the baths and dusted the furniture. Such was the reality of my very first job. It wasn't particularly fun. In fact, it could be really unpleasant at times, especially at the beginning. The first time I made a bed, I didn't fold the sheets correctly and the manager made me do it all over again. But one of my colleagues showed me exactly what to do and I took notes, just like I did in school. It took ages for me to get it right but when I did, I felt happy and confident, and it wasn't long before I could make a bed in no time at all!

The guests were mostly pleasant and I even learned new words in a few different languages by speaking to some of them. However, on a few occasions, they would get annoyed because they had returned to their room to find me there cleaning it. Then there were a few guests who left stuff like empty pizza boxes and clothing on the floor, making it just about impossible for me to do any cleaning at all. But the worst thing was when we lost clothes guests had asked to be dry cleaned - occasionally I'd forget to put a ticket on an item, and it would simply disappear!

Although it wasn't well paid, the job enabled me to party with my friends and keep my mobile phone in credit. It wasn't just the money that made it all worthwhile. For the first time I was able to spend time with adults other than my parents and teachers. I had always thought that it would be difficult to get on with them, but as long as I was willing to work as hard as them, we all got on fine. They didn't have any authority over me either - we were all the same - pushing the same carts and cleaning the same number of rooms. And if I didn't want to do the work, these grown-ups wouldn't try to twist my arm. They wouldn't yell at me or punish me, it was up to me to motivate myself. That was one very important lesson for me to learn and one I never got taught in school.

My time at the hotel also taught me that you can gain new skills from any kind of work, even a job you never thought you'd do. And at the same time, it showed me where I didn't want to be in future. And I didn't want to be in a hotel cleaning baths and folding towels for the rest of my life. I was looking for something a lot more challenging.

Bright nights, big problems

Author Paul Bogard discusses why we should turn off the lights and appreciate the dark.

Astronomers rate the darkness of our skies on a scale of 9 (brightest) to 1 (darkest). Most of us spend our lives in the radiance of levels 5 to 8, only rarely venturing into areas ranked 3 or darker. Because of the rapid growth of light pollution over recent decades, most Americans under 40 have never known real darkness. All over the globe our nights are growing brighter, and almost nowhere are they growing darker. We are just beginning to learn the true cost of all this light. Studies usually link our overuse of light at night with health concerns such as sleep disorders and disease. Other studies report the damaging ecological consequences, the tremendous waste of energy, and even the decrease in safety and security. But the steady loss of darkness from our lives is not easily measured, for like the similarly endangered qualities of solitude and quiet, the true value of darkness is something we are barely aware of.

Take a brilliantly starry sky. Since the beginning of time, a sky plush with stars was part of the common human experience. Everywhere on Earth, on most nights, our predecessors came face to face with the universe. This experience influenced their beliefs, mythologies, art their very understanding of their place in the world. Today, because of light pollution, many of us live under skies which are polluted by light. For the tens of millions who live under a night sky showing 25 stars or fewer, it is nearly impossible to imagine a natural sky of some 2,500 individual stars backed by great swathes of uncountable billions. Our night sky continues to shape us, but now it is the absence of the universe around us that influences our beliefs, our myths, our impulse to create. We are being shaped by a diminished experience of darkness, and most of us don't even know what we are missing.

Our Milky Way galaxy is home to several hundred billion stars, and the universe home to several hundred billion other galaxies. A sky wiped clear of stars encourages us to exaggerate our importance, to imagine humanity as the center of all things. Face to face with the endless immensity of the universe, we have the chance to know how insignificant we really are. But we might also realize the true largeness of our living on this planet, and realize that we have an enormous responsibility to care, that there is no other place to go, that home is here.

And what of beauty? "Everyone needs beauty as well as bread," wrote John Muir, American naturalist and author, and varied degrees of darkness are rich with this. Lighting designers in Paris understand that without darkness, there is no "city of light", and work constantly to create their city's atmospheric beauty by subtly mixing artificial light with darkness. And with night's moonlit geographies, its scents of desert rain and autumn fires, its pulsing insect symphonies punctuated by a bird's solo call on a northern lake, natural darkness has many offerings of its own.

Yet we are immersed in artificial light. Much of this lighting is wholly unnecessary, born of habit and lack of awareness. So let us become aware: simply by shielding our existing lights we could significantly reduce their negative effects on our body, our mind, our soul. Artificial light at night is a miracle, a wonder, a quality that enriches our lives. But the same has always been true of darkness, and can be again.

Listening

Human beings have a strong need to 46.1placeputtellsay their experiences and problems into words. That is why everyone 46.2attractsappreciatesapprovesapplauds a "friendly ear" - someone who is willing to listen to their troubles and joys. But few people realize what a complex skill listening is. To be a good listener requires great 46.3skillspowersforcesstrengths of concentration, which can only be gained through practice.

There are two reasons why listening is often such hard work. Firstly, the 46.4simplifysimplesimplysimplification factor is that people much prefer to speak. How often have you missed what someone has said because you were thinking about what you were going to say in 46.5turnanswerreplyreport? The second reason is that people speak too slowly. The average speed is about 125 words per minute, which is not fast enough for the human brain. It allows too much time for the concentration to fail, as the brain tries to keep itself busy with 46.6the othersanotherotherothers thoughts.

Next time you are in a listening 46.7atmospheresituationstationcircumstance, try to predict what the speaker is going to say. Ask yourself questions about what is being said, and see 46.8unlesswhichifwhy the speaker answers them. Finally, make quick summaries in your head of the main points that have been made. All of these things will help you to concentrate and make you a better listener.

A Mistake

One Christmas eve, the Stopes family were invited to stay at their friends' new house in Scotland. As it was very far away, and the Stopes would not be able to arrive before midnight, their friends agreed to leave the gate open and put the key under a rock outside the front door. In 47.1 way, the Stopes could let themselves in 47.2 waking their friends up.

The map that their friends 47.3 drawn for them was not very good, so they did not find the house 47.4 about 1 o'clock in the morning. The gate was locked so Gary, the eldest of the three brothers, climbed over and unlocked 47.5 from the inside. The family marched towards the house and began to look for the front door key. Before they found it, however, the father whispered that the back door had 47.6 left open anyway, so they all got in through that.

It had been a long tiring journey, so the Stopes made themselves some tea and sandwiches. All the time they kept very quiet so 47.7 not to wake up their friends. At one thirty in the morning they crept upstairs and found three empty rooms to sleep. The 47.8 morning, Christmas day, they came downstairs and found two complete strangers sitting at the table. The whole family had accidentally broken into the house next door!