Đề thi thử tiếng Anh THPT Quốc gia 2023 (Mã đề 001)

A Healthy Way To Know A City

Maybe you are staying in a city, and there is no park nearby where you can take your morning job. One of the more recent trend is to go on a running tour, but you are not leading the way. Rather, a running ___(31)___ who knows the best ___(32)___ in the city acts as your guide. You are going out for a run, but you are also being shown highlights of the city while you are doing it.

Guided running tours are a trend that seems to be catching ___(33)___ in quite a few of the bigger cities in the United States. New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco are just three of the major cities that have running tours in ___(34)___. They offer these tours to individuals, groups, and even for corporate events. If you are going into a city with colleagues to attend a business meeting or a convention, what better way is there to see the city and network with others ___(35)___ while taking a healthy run?

The World's Smallest Science

Have you ever noticed that our machines are getting smaller? Cell phones, cameras, computers and everything else look smaller every year. One kind of new science involves machines that are smaller than we can imagine. The name of this science is nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology means doing science, engineering, and technology at a very, very small level. In other words, nanotechnology is the science of tiny things. But how tiny is the science of nanotechnology? In nanotechnology, scientists work with things that are the size of a nanometer. One meter has one billion nanometers. Here is another way to describe nanotechnology: it is the science of observing and controlling individual atoms and molecules.

Nanotechnology is a new word, but the idea of studying atoms and molecules has existed for a long time. In 1959, an American scientist Richard Phillips Feynman gave a speech in which he claimed that we can see and control molecules and atoms. About ten years later, a Japanese professor came up with the term “nanotechnology”.

Because nanotechnology is so new, we are only starting to understand how we can use it. Nanotechnology could be very useful in medicine. In the future, doctors may use nanotechnology to help with organ transplants. An organ transplant is the act of putting an organ into another person's body. Scientists think that with nanotechnology, they might be able to make a person's body accept a foreign organ. Nanotechnology might also help doctors fight infections, find diseases in patients, and deliver medicine to the right spot in patients’ bodies.

Nanotechnology might also be useful in protecting the environment. It might be able to help us save energy, reduce waste, and keep water clean. For example, nanotechnology might be able to make some materials such as steel stronger. If we have stronger steel, we will be able to use it longer. That way, we can produce less steel and save our resources.

Nanotechnology might be useful in so many ways. This science of studying tiny things could change the world.

Billboards that Recognize You

Have you ever felt you were being watched? Some new technologies might make you feel that way. Digital billboards are being created that have the ability to recognize certain characteristics. These high-tech devices have cameras pointed at the people on the street, and software that tries to recognize people by age and gender. A computer inside the billboard then uses this information to display ads that are directed at the people who are looking at the billboard. For example, if a man passes a billboard featuring an ad for cosmetics, the computer can change the ad to something that is more likely to catch the man’s attention, such as a restaurant, or sporting goods.

While advertisers see this as a great opportunity to reach their target customers, some people feel that this kind of profiling is an invasion of their privacy. People are now much more aware of how information is exposed, shared, bought, and sold on the Internet. Now this debate will include technologies such as these “smart” billboards. But advertisers claim that they are sensitive to people’s concern about privacy - companies that have tested the billboards in Japan and the US assure consumers that the billboards can only guess your age and gender, but they will not be able to recognize your face or obtain any personal information about you.

Until recently, this kind of “personal” advertising has been mostly limited to the Internet. Search engines like Google and Bing can follow what we search for because each computer that connects to those sites has a unique identity. Companies then pay search engines to use this information to display ads for products and services that you have searched for. So if you search for travel information, you are likely to see ads for airlines and hotels. This kind of advertising has proven to be much more effective and valuable than traditional advertising.

In addition to taking steps to deliver more personalized messages, advertisers are using billboards to offer more useful information. Digital billboards can connect to the Internet to display information such as the time, weather, and news headlines. In the future, this technology could be used to reflect activity on social media sites or to broadcast ads that relate to local events.

In today’s world, people ignore thousands of ads every day. Advertisers are trying to change that trend by personalizing the experience of seeing an ad. So pay attention the next time you see a billboard - it could be talking to you.

Note: ad (n) = advertisement