It is generally believed that some people are born with certain talents, for instance sport or

music, and others are not. However, it is sometimes claimed that any child can be taught to
become a good sports person or musician
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion

In the past, people store knowledge in the books. Nowadays, people store knowledge on the
Internet. Do you think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

Nowadays, more and more women decide to have children later in their life? Why and do the
advantages will outweigh the disadvantages?

It is now possible for scientists and tourists to travel to remote natural environment, such as
the South Pole. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

Large companies use sports events to promote their products. Some people think it has a
negative impact on sports. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Students leave high school without learning the way how to manage their money. What are
the reasons and solutions for this issue?

Now, many scientific institutes conduct research on live animals. Some people regard it as
cruel and unnecessary, while others believe it is justified in the interest of human welfare.
Discuss both and give opinion.
The picture demonstrates the structure of the most important cell in human body, a neuron.
One neuron is comprised of three parts as depicted, the head, the trunk and the tail. The head,
which is called Cell body (soma), is in a shape of stars with drendrites poking out like threads.
These parts are thought to be a receiving end, which gathers information emited from other
neurons. Connected to the Cell body, the trunk, axon, is a long and sometimes curved line.
Along the length of it, there are numerous myelin sheaths lining, each one after another. These
bags would help to accelerate the speed of neural signals transmission that goes in one
direction, which is the main function of the axon. Last but not least, at the other end of the
axon, the tail is a palm-like structure which has many terminal buttons. These buttons serve as
junctions in order for other neurons to connect to this neuron via their dendrites on the Cell
body (soma).
In some countries, young people have become richer, healthier and live longer but they are
less happy.
- What are the causes?
- What can be done to address this situation?
In some countries, unhappiness could be observed among the groups of young people despite
the fact that they are much healthier, richer and have long life expectancy than their ancestors.
This phenomenon may be due to a life without clear orientation or the downside of technology
advancements. The paragraphs below shall explain these reasons accompanied by some
probable solutions.

The young nowadays may seem to possess everything without shedding any perspiration. In
fact, young children now could have valuable presents at their birthdays or adolescents may
have handsome allowances from parents to buy things they want. When needs are
unconditionally satisfied, it is likely that people would not make attempts to achieve goals.
Without a sense of orientation, these young men could be incapable to feel happy and hopeful
in life, even as something good is to happen to them. In addition, facilitated daily life activities
thanks to developments in technologies may render young people a potential loss of interests
in labour-based activities. They, as a result, may be prone to dislike the lifestyle that requires
much intensity of physical labour. Therefore, the level of happy hormones like dopamine in
their brains becomes lesser and as such they feel unhappy when it comes to accomplish a task.

To combat such adverse situation needs a lot of changes. First, education systems should focus
on engaging students in physical labours in order for them to feel respectful to such jobs. For
example, japanese students are required to go to work as coal-shovelling workers in railway
companies if they want to graduate. Second, parents should start to program their children to
complete tasks so as to earn rewards. This way, children would not take things as granted and
they could become more goal-oriented when they grow up. Finally, the municipals authorities
need to create programs like volunteering to help the old or else to give young people more
chances to contribute to the society.

In conclusion, it is the indulgent practice from parents and conveniences from technology
advancements that create a generation of unhappy youth. To address the issue, education and
governing programs should be designed to engage young people in contributing more to the
society by physical labour.
Test 1/Cam 16

The line graphs illustrate the proportions of electrical appliances owned by households as well
as weekly number of hours spent on house chores from 1920 to 2019. Obviously, a negative
correlation could be seen between the percentages of owned electrical devices and the time
spent on housework.
In 1920, 50 hours a week were consumed in a family’s chores, which is fivefold than that of
2019, at 10 hours per week. The 2019 record is the lowest point of the declining trend over the
years. From 1920 to 1960, a dramatic drop could be observed on the chart, which was a 30-
hour decline at the end of 1960. From then, the drop rate decreased and reached a slightly
steady balance, reaching 15 hour per week of housework in 2000. And this figure continued to
tank to the 2019 record.
The general drop above could be reasoned by the corresponding increase of possessing
electrical appliances. From 1920 to 1960, refrigerators are bought by many families such that
the ownership of this freezer reached 90%. And 20 years later, absolutely 100% families have a
refrigerator in their house. Similarly, vacuum cleaners also saw a steep increase over 60 years
between 1920 and 1980. The 1980 record of vacuum cleaners was equal to that of refrigerator,
despite a smaller step-up from the record of 1920 compared to the refrigerators’ 1920 record.
Since 1980, this appliance also appreciated by 10% and reached 100% for rest of the time
surveed. On the contrary, unlike the mentioned appliances, washing machine had an increasing
period followed by a modest decrease which then, started to rise up higher. Its record could not
reach as high as the others.

As recently noticed, house-buyers are becoming more attentive to the origins of the place they
plan to buy. This could be due to the desire to make a huge profit from housing investment. To
implement such strategy, people need to obtain information through not only the internet but
also the city council.

Making a fortune out of housing business is considered quick and easy nowadays. Obviously,
one just has a sufficient budget to pay the upfront fee to own a place and then has it advertised
for sale without regards to paying its full price. No sooner the advert is put online than the
owner has received many offers for their newly bought house. Therefore, with a history carried
along with it, the house could no doubt be of great appeal to potential purchasers. As a result,
the turnover value would unimaginably profitable for the house merchants.

To achieve such rewards, people could use the internet to probe for historical tales of the place
they intend to invest. It is not uncommon for stories to be publicized online, especially sorts of
historical information. One can learn effortlessly and accurately about a subject via internet. For
example, people who travel to a location could read about the place before actually landing on
that ground. With the same tactics, one could also apply to housing investment to earn better
profits. Another method could be utilized is researching the city council’s archive. For those
buildings that has long-established historical backgrounds, it seems unlikely that their
information is digitalized due to lack of human resources and funds to organize the collection.
As such, one realizing this method could gather valuable knowledge of the place more
effectively.

In conclusion, researching a place’s history is becoming interesting to many people thanks to

the lucrative return for their investments. Although many tactics could be applied, the internet
and the city council’s archive are proved to be the most efficient methods to resort to.
T2/Cam 16

The diagram depicts the process of producing sugar, which is derived mainly from sugar canes.
For starters, sugar canes grown in the fields will take up to 12 – 18 months to be fully useful.
Then, they are harvested via two methods. Normally in most labour-based agriculture, the
workers do the job by hands with sickles. In more industrialized countries, however, the plants
are collected mechanically. Despite different harvesting methods, the collected yields will then
go under the crushing process which could extract the juice inside the canes. This semi-product
is later transferred to a limestone filter to be purified, which is followed by vapourization in a
heat-based evaporator. At this stage, the extracted juice has become sort of syrup. This
substance then gets centrifuged in order to separate prematurely crystalized sugar from the
syrup. And finally, the sugary syrup undergoes the drying and cooling process to yield sugar in
large quantities.

Advertisements are popular in consumerist economies. And in such economies, to make great
profit, businesses often attempt to paint their products in positive light one way or another
when advertising to earn high profits. This could be understandable for people’s friendships
nowadays seem to be based only on possessions and appearances. However, this type of
advertising practice may factor in fraudulent marketing strategies which could produce bad
outcomes for both the companies and the societies.

Admittedly, people are likely to get involved with what is presently fashionable, popular and
trendy. This could bestow an approachable charisma upon them which then would help attract
others towards them. For example, a student who has recently entered a new university and is
in search of acquaintances might find it easier to get along with other student if he knows the
top-hit songs or possesses a gadget which is newly introduced into life. As a result, marketing
strategies focusing on describing a product as new always prove effective in sales.

In my opinion, such marketing strategies, however, might exaggerate the product’s functions.
Unfortunately, this could be harmful when later on people experiencing its true value which
fails to live up to the hyperbolic pitches could regard their money stolen. It could lead to the
damage of the company’s reputation to an extent that their business would be destroyed
irreversibly. More importantly, this might also badly affect the consumers’ confidence in
business integrity which is no doubt the health of any economies, especially the consumerist
ones. Without this confidence, advertisement industry and the whole economy might end up
witnessing staggering unemployment rates.

In conclusion, businesses attempt to advertize new features of their products to customers at

all cost due to the fact that consumerism dictates one’s identity and assimilation into any
groups. This practice, in a second thought, could destroy the companies’ prestige and cause
many people to lose their jobs if applied in a fanatical and irrational manner.
T3/Cam16
The plan above illustrates the layout of an airport after its redesign. Obivously, the new one
would be multifuntional and more spacious than the previous one. The first prominent feature
would be the construction of a sky train, which takes place of the existent walkway. It is hoped
to increase the number of passengers by roughly doubling the number of gates. Then, before
reaching the passport custom control as well as the security passport control, a shop is going to
be put up on the side of travel for people to do shopping while waiting. Beyond those places,
people who is going to board a plane will have their luggage examined at the site of bag drop,
which is not available at the present airport. For those who just get off a plane, they could get a
pick-up by using the car hire service situated near the exit. If they wish to cash some money,
there will be an ATM set up alongside the café. These are the add-on facilities in the future
plan.

It is thought that sweeteners in foods and beverages would bring up health issues to the
consumers. As a result, some measures such as raising costs of those sugary products are
proposed to deter people from impulse buying. I, myself, do not believe that could prove to be
effective due to following reasons and I root against the idea because of the sense of
infringement on societal liberalism.

To curb demands for sugary products by increasing prices would damage the economy as a
whole. First, the government could not impose a net price at which all sugary products should
be based on. The prices should be competitive to promote investment and innovation in
producing such products and as such, would benefit the economy’s health. Secondly, when
there is a mandate on the price, businesses would likely to find a solution to circumvent it by
using promotion strategies such as coupons or membership concession. Finally, price increase
may discourage some people who could not afford to buy sweetened items but not all and as
such the health problems would still exist.

In addition, raising the costs of those types of foods could be a sign of intervention on societal
liberalism. Each person is entitled to live the way he or she desires as long as they do not
infringe on others’ rights. Even, that lifestyle may cause some damages to their well-being. To
limit the affordability of people towards those products could instill on them a negative feeling
about the role of the government. If left brewing, that type of thought might extend to other
sectors of governance like tax policies or public welfare schemes. And to one point, the
governments have to spend a great deal of time to settle disputes continually in the society
without making any developments.
In conclusion, health problems resulted from consuming sugary products is not negligible.
However, resorting to price increase to solve them could not be a wise solution because of
potential damages to the economy, possible nonadherence of businesses and the undesirable
infringement on social liberalism.

T4/Cam 16
The virtuous circle illustrates how people recycle plastic bottles step-by-step. After wasted,
plastic bottles need to be put away into a special trash bin with a recycling sign. This will help
the garbage collecting truck which is dedicated to recycling recognize and collect it faster. Then,
the bottles undergo a sorting process in which it may be labelled preferable for recycling. The
others will be discarded. All the preferably-recycled bulk will then be compressed into square
blocks that will be transferred to a grinding machine. After being ground, the semi-products, in
shape of small pieces, will be washed with water before being poured into a funnel of a special
machine to make pellets. These resultant pellets will be heated to a point that they become raw
material which then will be packed into rectangular shapes. They now are central to the
industry that produces plastic items such as bottles, T-shirt, trays, bags and pencils.

In light of AI (artificial intelligence) development, many vehicles such as cars and trucks will be
manned automatically. This would free people from the burden of steering the wheels and
paying constant attention while on roads. In my perspective, it is hard to see why the
disadvantages could outnumber the advantages. However, I shall look from both angles and
provide some examples.

Admittedly, when manned by AI, the machines could cause disastrous errors if malfunctions
happen. For example, a car could stop dead in the middle of the roads while running due to an
electrical circuit failure, which then might result in piling-up accidents for other cars could not
take time to evade such an obstacle. Some might argue that AI would set a safe distance
between each car in order to avoid such scenario but in case of such electrical failure, the AI
might not properly preserve the safe distance. Moreover, automatic vehicles could be
programmed to save the drivers’ life so strictly that in a situation when it only requires to
sacrifice one life to prevent an accident, it would cause a catastrophic event. For instance,
instead of hitting a road barrier to stop if a flat tyre happens and potentially having the driver
killed, it crashes into a crowd of pedestrians and kill numerous people.

Despite the possibly gloomy situations mentioned, the future of driverless cars and trucks still
hold various beneficial outcomes. Without having to constantly be sensible to the roads’
possible dangers, drivers could be multitasking. This advantage would help them reconcile the
struggles they are having in minds like career goals and families, devising contracts for the
upcoming deals or planning to make efficient investments. People would become more
productive and as such contribute more to the economy. Additionally, the rate of violating
traffic rules could reduce dramatically. Human intents to break the law could not be effective
thanks to the legitimately validated rules programmed in the processing units which essentially
drive the vehicles. And as soon as new updates of regulations come out, the processing units
could be kept up-to-date in a quick way.
In conclusion, while some people might fear the detrimental outcomes that an automatic
vehicle might create in case of malfunctions, I believe the profits that technology brings up
could be more precious in terms of boosting the economy and reducing the traffic law
violations.

Now, many scientific institutes conduct research on live animals. Some people regard it as
cruel and unnecessary, while others believe it is justified in the interest of human welfare.
Discuss both and give opinion.

To avoid unpredictable risks to human life, many scientists choose to do experiments on

animals in order to make advances. This practice, however, is deemed to be barbaric and
should not be a prerequisite for scientific developments by some people. In my opinion coupled
with others, animal testings could not be excluded for an elemental reason. The following
passages will serve to argue from both sides.

On one hand, sacrificing a life of an animal so easily might lead to moral depravity. As animals
are inferior to humans in terms of intelligence and resistant capability, that humans are entitled
to take their life for self-interest is somewhat like a strong, intelligent man can legitimately strip
a weak, retarded man off of his foods or house or a powerful nation can conquer an
underdeveloped country without any consents. Imaginably, a society where the strong oppress
the weak or the rich enslave the poor is definitely an accurate image of moral depravity. That is
why many thoughtful persons are not advocating experimentation on animals.

On the other hand, humans are faced with potential dangers of scientific advances if they are
not experiemented beforehand on animals. For example, if a medicine were marketed merely
based on intuition of the inventors, it could cause serious adverse reactions to patients, even
life-threatening events. These dangers would not affect one or two individuals but maybe
hundreds or thousands of human lives as there would be a lot of people using it simultaneously.
As a result, experimental data based on animals are of high importance to safe stewardship of
scientific advance application. Therefore, I believe animal-based experimentation could not be
omitted in making scientific developments.

In conclusion, using animals as scapegoats for humans in making scientific advances are
somehow cruel to them but it is not an optional choice. Were it not animals’ lives, human lives
would be at stake.
In the past, people store knowledge in the books. Nowadays, people store knowledge on the
Internet. Do you think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?
As technologies advance, information-archiving form has shift from books to digital storage.
Although this new type of archive possesses many conveniences such as space savings or
instant access, I believe its drawbacks are far more notable than its usefulness.

Digital storage could pose a security risk to owners. When information is digitalized, with
internet, many capable hackers, by using phishing emails or scams, could easily get access to
the servers to steal the information without the owners’ notice. In addition, some intruders can
even pervert the information so that it serves to sway people’s knowledge according to their
intentions. Take wikipedia website for an instance, someone can arbitrarily change the profile
of a footballer on that site to defame him after the defeat of their team due to his performance.

Additionally, coupled with security breach potentials from internet hackers, digital storage
could cost a great deal of electrical energy to maintain the capability of inquiry from people.
While with books one can switch off the lights for a period because of inconvenient access, the
archival servers can be powered for 24/7 to function properly for anyone over the globe. For
example, a man from the U.S can get access to a site in the morning and a woman in Vietnam
can log into the same site in the morning despite the fact that the time zone of the U.S is far
diffenrent from that of Vietnam. This, in turn, might raise the use of fossil fuel to an
unnecessarily tremendous degree which could worsen the situation of climate change.

In conclusion, online storage of knowledge, despite some advantages like space savings or
instant access, could prove to be insecure and highly energy-demanding.

Nowadays, more and more women decide to have children later in their life? Do the
advantages will outweigh the disadvantages?
Human society has developed to a state where women are entitled to as many roles as men
are. This likely results in a phenomenon of middle-aged pregnancy. From my perspective, its
downsides could overtake the upsides with regards to high rate of abortion and health of the
mother.

Scientifically, pregnancy in later life could procreate newborns with defects. The most noted
defect is mental retardation which is often named the Down’s syndrome. Babies with this
syndrome normally have shorter life expentancy and intellectual limit compared to healthy
counterparts. Another problem associated with aged pregnancy is that fetuses could die
prematurely for compromised delivery capability. It is evidently true that an old woman can
have her uterine contractility reduced due to decline of sexual hormones. As a result, the baby
inside her womb could stay more than the acceptable gestational period which could lead to
death.
In addition, an aged mother’s health could compromise quickly when taking care of her
newborn. As she has to stay awake for long period to nurse the baby, sleep deprivation could
deteriorate her attentiveness and body balance control. These problems could lead to
uncoordinated motion
that makes her likely to fall and incur injurious damages. Moreover, her health could be
worsened due to eating disorder which is a result of the stress of caring task. If not treated, it
could become chronic anorexia that may damage the mother’s health permanently.

In conclusion, pregnancy at old age is a subsequent result of societal development in which

gender equality is recognized. However, its disadvantages are more detrimental to mothers
than its advantages in terms of health and abortion rate.
The two pictures describe the working mechanism of a camera. It is easy to observe that there
are five essential compartments inside a camera, which are the reflect mirrors, CMOS sensor,
CPU, a memory stick and a set of convex lenses.

Before a photo taken, lights coming from front subjects will travel through the set of convex
lenses which then are bounced perpendicularly upwards by a reflect mirror set at an angle of
right-leaning 45 degrees. The bounced lights enter another penta-mirror which through
multiple bounces directs the lights horizontally to the eye of the user via a viewfinder so as to
ensure the best shots.

Then, to shoot, users have to press the shutter button on top. That pressed button pulls up the
45-degree mirror to let the lights come straight to the CMOS sensor which captures the image
of the subjects. The signals then are transferred to the CPU to be processed into a digital file
that subsequently is stored in the memory card. Users can review their shootings by checking
the LCD screen on the back of the camera.
The flowcharts show upgrades of a water drainage system in a city. These upgrades might be
intended to prevent the flooding of the city and overcome the water shortage situation.
Overall, there is not much difference between future and present plan.

At present, all pure water supplied for daily activities such as household use, factory
manufacturing, shops and others comes from a dam. In future, there will be another source to
supply more pure water cope with water shortage. It is viable thanks to new technologies that
help the water treament plan recycle waste water collected after use.

Another change is that now storm water goes straight to the river near the city. This bears a risk
of flooding and erosion of river banks which both might lead to detrimental consequences. As a
result, all storm water will be directed into the water treatment plan to be pooled with waste
water for recycling and later supplied for the city.
The pictures review strategies to resolve flooding problems of a city. At the moment, most of
the city including the residential area, the industrial park and the commercial buildings lies
within the flooding area which is caused by the confluence of two rivers, A from the north and B
from the east.

The first strategy is relocation of those flood-impacted parts outside the lower ground. This
approach is highly eco-protective because there are no interventions to natural courses of the
rivers. Both industrial park and residential area will be moved northwards while the commercial
buildings will be relocated southwards. However, these big and important areas when uprooted
will definitely cost a huge fund which might tremendously raise budget spending of the city.

The second strategy is to build dams and reservoirs upstream at the north end of river A and at
the west end of river B while still keeping those flood-impacted areas in place. This approach,
by contrast, will affect the environment, particularly land because there will be shortage of
water to water the surrounding land. But it will cost much less money to operate compared to
the first strategy.
The picture illustrates the evolution of horses over 40 million years. Obviously, compared to
size of the primitive form, Eohippus, horses nowadays are much bigger and more muscular with
lots of hair.

Eohippus living 40 million years ago had a shape that looked like a present indoor dog. Its
hooves then were also seperated into five toes like dogs. After 10 million years of evolution,
Eohippus became Mesohippus which is bigger and hairier. Notably, the Mesohippus’ hooves
had only 3 toes because of the fusion of the middle two to form a big toe.

Then, in subsequent 15 million years, Mesohippus evolved into Merychippus. This new form
possesed longer tail, developed a mane and strong hooves although the size was comparable as
the previous form. The strong hooves changed due to the elongation and growth of the feet’s
bones, especially the middle toe which gave rise to a different shape of the legs of
Merychippus.

Gradually, the Merychippus kept evolving until a time its size became full-grown as horses seen
nowadays. Horses are much more muscular with longer tail and mane as well as different feet.
Their feet now do not have toes but only 4 bones in a vertical line to provide stability and agility
for running.

The diagram shows how used paper get recyled. As can be seen, the process has four distict
phases.
First, waste paper is collected and transferred via a conveyor belt into a collector. Then, water
and chemicals are added to pulp the paper.

Second, the completely pulped mixture goes through a filtering step. The unfiltered pulp gets
rotated by a machine during which soap and water coupled with air are put in. This
combination is to remove the ink contained in the pulp.

Then, after ink removal is completed, the filtered pulp has to be purified by a mixture of water
and chemical. This cleaning step is necessary to ensure the production of white sheets of paper
in the end.

Finally, the cleaned pulp is then spreaded over another conveyor belt. To produce thin layer of
papers, heated rollers are used to run over the pulp and compress them into intended
thickness. Then, recylced paper is cut into different sizes for different usage.
The pie graph and the table describe the proportions of Anthropology graduates’ post-
graduated activities and salaries of those who work in 3 sectors (government, private and
freelance) after 5 years (one university). As it can be seen, most of them are engaged in work
after graduation and in those working, the salaries are above 50.000 dollars for the majority.

Over half of the students participate in committed jobs after finishing study, about 52%. This
figure is far bigger than other types of activities. In others, merely part-time work is seen as a
popular choice for post-graduates which is 15% and followed by unemployment which also is a
2-figure number (12%). There is less than 10% of students who decide to further their study, in
some cases as a work-study combination.

According to data shown, most of anthropology students can make over 50.000 dollars a year
after graduation. There is 95% of students who can achieve such income and they can do that in
two sectors, as a freelance consultant and a governmental bureaucrat. A little lesser proportion
make a comparable income is recorded in private company sector with 90% having a salary of
over 50.000 dollars.

Some people think that a huge amount of time and money is spent on the protection of wild
animals and that this money could be better spent on the human population. To what extent
do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

Investing time and money either on animals or humans is debatable. A group of opinions is in
favor of saving wildlife while others are inclined to solve problems in human society. In my
perspective, the resources should be allocated the side that protects animals since it could
solve both sides’ arguments.

On one hand, wildlife helps maintain biodiversity which has a great impact on human habitats.
Some animals are predators and as such they control the population of their preys. These so-
called preys, if not contained, could destroy human crops. For example, some birds that could
prey on grasshoppers are important to preserve the rice crops which are staple foods for
people. In addition, wildlife helps the earth flora properly function with their manure. And
these plants evidently are the main source of oxygen on earth. Therefore, spending time and
money conserving animals is utmost important to some green thinkers.

On the other hand, there are existing and arising problems in human society that needs looking
into. As our human population seemingly doubles in a short period, there rises shortage of
houses, lack of educational institutions and overwhelmed healthcare system. The rapid growth
of human population also creates needs for spaces to build more accommodations, plant more
crops. As a result, wildlife is endangered by this phenomenon. To solve this vicious cycle,
policies should be made and measures should be come up with in order to protect wildlife and
their habitats which then benefit human existence as mentioned above.

In conclusion, spending time and money on preserving species of animals is the wise choice
since they can sustain the good quality of our staple food and the living air for our next
generation.s