HỘI CÁC TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN ĐỀ THI CHỌN HỌC SINH GIỎI LẦN THỨ XIV

KHU VỰC DUYÊN HẢI, ĐỒNG BẰNG BẮC BỘ MÔN THI: TIẾNG ANH – KHỐI 11

TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN LAM SƠN Ngày thi 15/07/2023

Thời gian làm bài 180 phút

(Đề thi gồm 15 trang)

PART 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4yCf6ZLgAo

The word ‘trauma’ — meaning a terrible event we live through that cannot be remembered but which generates painful related symptoms — captures an acute paradox in our relation-

ship to our own histories: some of what is most significant in our lives is inaccessible to day to day memory; the more important something is, the less we may be able to recall it.

There seems to be a threshold of pain above which our minds won’t go in order to retrieve an event. We’ll recall with ease the pleasant childhood spring morning thirty years ago by the

river bank when we swam and fed the ducks; but we’ll be sincerely unable to remember a moment that same day when our troubled father abruptly lost his temper over an apparent triv-

iality and, from nowhere, slapped us extremely hard across the cheek and left us to walk home alone. The memory-retrieving part of our minds is like an eye that clenches shut in the

presence of a flash, and closes down when asked to archive and then recover incidents of intense fury or terror, ridicule or shame. The difficulties may be very large — a bomb, a physical

violation — or apparently more modest — mockery, an unexplained burst of fury, a prolonged absence. Yet what defines a trauma is not so much an objective score on a scale of awful -

ness as a subjective impression that an incident is too difficult for us to make sense of; it is too much at odds with our models of reality and poses too great a risk to our hopes of our -

selves and those we want to love.

Though we may be nominally protected by our ignorance of our traumas, the overall impact of our disconnection has the power to derail our lives. We may not have kept in mind that

our father was a deeply vengeful and frightening man, but it’s on exactly this basis that we have begun to fear all men and to despise our whole being. We may not remember our

mother’s terrifying competitiveness but its submerged presence is what has bred in us a deleteriously shy manner and a habit of removing ourselves from any position where we may tri-

umph and be admired by others. Problems don’t go away because they have been sent to a catacomb: they have a greater impact precisely because they can’t be brought to consciousness

and resolved through conversation and sympathetic analysis.

The challenge of recovering from trauma is that we can’t on command remember what we do not know we have even forgotten. We need to proceed indirectly, awakening ourselves to

the possibility of buried difficulties on the basis of a range of otherwise inexplicable present-day fears and tics. When there is no obvious reason for our body dysmorphia or shyness, im-

potence or insomnia, paranoia or despair, we should start to dig — in the presence of those who love us and understand our mind s — to prevent our stories from being controlled by fig-

ures of our personal histories who did not have our interests at heart.

We need to retrieve as much of our pasts as will be required to embark on the free adult lives we deserve.

PART 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNyUmbmQQZg

As your morning alarm blares, you mutter to yourself, “Why did I set it so early?” While brushing your teeth, you think, “I need a haircut... unless?” Rushing out the front door, you reach

for your keys and realize they’re not there. Frustrated you shout, “I can’t do anything right!” just in time to notice your neighbor. Being caught talking to yourself can feel embarrassing,

and some people even stigmatize this behavior as a sign of mental instability. But decades of psychology research show that talking to yourself is completely normal. In fact, most, if not

all, of us engage in some form of self-talk every single day. So why do we talk to ourselves? And does what we say matter? Self-talk refers to the narration inside your head, sometimes

called inner speech. It differs from mental imagery or recalling facts and figures. Specifically, psychologists define self-talk as verbalized thoughts directed toward yourself or some facet

of your life. This includes personal conversations like “I need to work on my free throw.” But it also includes reflections you have throughout the day, like “The gym is crowded tonight.

I’ll come back tomorrow.” And while most self-talk in adults tends to be silent, speaking to yourself out loud also falls into this category. In fact, psychologists believe our first experi -

ences with self-talk are mostly vocal, as children often speak to themselves out loud as they play . In the 1930s, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky hypothesized that this kind of speech

was actually key to development. By repeating conversations they’ve had with adults, children practice managing their behaviors and emotions on their own. Then, as they grow older,

this outward self-talk tends to become internalized, morphing into a private inner dialogue. We know this internal self-talk is important, and can help you plan, work through difficult situ-
ations, and even motivate you throughout the day. But studying self-talk can be difficult. It relies on study subjects clearly tracking a behavior that’s spontaneous and often done without

conscious control. For this reason, scientists are still working to answer basic questions, like, why do some people self-talk more than others? What areas of the brain are activated during

self-talk? And how does this activation differ from normal conversation? One thing we know for certain, however, is that what you say in these conversations can have real

impacts on your attitude and performance. Engaging in self-talk that’s instructional or motivational has been shown to increase focus, boost self-esteem, and help tackle everyday tasks.

For example, one study of collegiate tennis players found that incorporating instructional self-talk into practice increased their concentration and accuracy. And just as chatting to a friend

can help decrease stress, speaking directly to yourself may also help you regulate your emotions.

PART 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAY7k0DPIuU

Did you know that cannibalism used to be a popular medical remedy? That's right, in the 17th century, well before Advil, Europeans would ingest ground up mummies for headaches.

And human fat, blood, and bone were used to treat everything from gout to nosebleeds, yet cannibalism is largely absent and morally frowned upon today. But let's forget the social

quagmire There are plenty of reasons why you shouldn't eat people these days.

For starters, we now know that human meat is a surprisingly low source of calories compared to other red meats. According to one study, human muscle contains about 1,300 calories per

kilogram. That's less than beef, and nothing compared to bear and boar meat. Now you might think this would actually make human burgers a great low cal alternative, until you

remember you're probably trying to eat humans because you're starving to death. So low cal is the opposite of what you want, plus it's not worth taking the risk if you could help it.

It turns out we carry some pretty nasty diseases that make 24-hour food poisoning look like the sniffles. Eat someone raw, and you risk contracting any bloodborne diseases they carry.

But even if you cook the meat, it still won't always go so well for you. Case in point are the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. The would eat the body and brain of the deceased family

members out of cultural tradition. But that practice stopped after hundreds of people died in the 1950s and '60s from an otherwise rare neurological disorder which they contracted from

eating infected human brains. The brain tissue contained prions, deadly misfolded proteins that form spongy holes in your brain. They survive the cooking process and, if eaten, are

highly contagious.

On the legal side of things, cannibalism falls into a gray area. Oddly enough, cannibalism itself isn't illegal in the US or UK, but you probably committed some crime along the way to get

that slab of meat, grave robbing, desecration of a corpse, murder and maybe all of the above. One exception that won't put you behind bars is if you eat yourself. Yep, that's a thing. It's

called autocannibalism. The most common example today, called placentophagy, is when a woman eats her placenta after giving birth. The idea is that it could raise energy levels and

reduce the risk of postpartum depression by stabilizing hormones, but the science is still out on whether there's any real benefit.

So if you have a hankering for human, maybe try some pork instead. After all, that's what we taste like. Oh, wait, wait, I mean according to cannibals.

PART 4 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2npFHrmUCps

Everything is more expensive. Prices overall are about 13% higher than they were in April 2021, with the cost of groceries rising by nearly 20% over that time and the cost of gas up 22%.

It's even expensive to stay home. For example, the cost of electricity has surged 21%.

Reducing inflation is the number one long- term objective of central banking right now. And that's true in the US as well as globally. Sometimes inflation is like a shock because it de -

stroys the consumers' real income. We look back in the early days of inflation, the Fed was using this term "transitory" to describe inflation because they thought a lot of the things that

were causing prices to go up in the near term were related to the pandemic. They thought eventually that stuff would just dissipate. Well, it really hasn't. The Federal Reserve is using the

most powerful tool it has to slow down the inflation creep, interest rate hikes. It is a very effective way. The problem is it's as much an art as a science. Different parts of the economy re-

spond differently to changes in interest rates.

One of the things that people don't understand is that inflation really might be benefiting them in ways they don't fully acknowledge. There are winners and losers. There are certainly

people in the economy for whom this is the major challenge and there are people in the economy for whom this is a big opportunity. So why does inflation stick around? Is anyone bene-

fiting from it? And how do we get rid of it?

Inflation is simply the rate of increase in prices in the economy. Inflation can occur for a number of reasons. One is supply and demand issues, meaning there's too much money to go

around or not enough things to go around. Another catalyst: the cost of doing business increases, which leads to companies raising their prices. All of those things happened at scale in the

past three years. Prices skyrocketed in a very volatile environment. But now that we're past the worst of the pandemic induced stressors, prices are still struggling to stabilize.

It's difficult for businesses to figure out how to set exactly the right price. When do the prices of things change? Some goods change prices frequently. If you go to the gas station, it's dif -

ferent every time. If you think of other things that we pay for like college tuition or rents or even something simple like the cost of a movie ticket, those things have lower frequency re -

sets.

Also it's difficult for consumers to do their shopping. If you put something in your shopping basket and you come back the next morning and it's a different price, you might feel not good

about that and not like the firm that's doing that to you. And because of these reasons, the firms often leave their prices stable for a period of time. Inflation also has a funny component

that's expectations driven, meaning if we expect prices to go up in the future, that's probably going to happen.

If we think, for example, that inflation is going to stay higher for longer, I will be inclined to price that in because I only get to reset my prices once or twice a year. So I'm building in an

expectation that

inflation may stay higher for longer. Actually doing that may mean inflation stays higher for longer.

But if I expect for prices to be stable, if I'm convinced the Federal Reserve is going to do their job and get rid of inflation and stabilize prices, well, I should stabilize my prices as well. So

part of the battle that we're fighting when we fight inflation is the battle of expectations.

When inflation expectations are high, it tends to influence behavior. It will make people think, well, I'm paying more for goods, so I need more money. And then in turn, business owners

will say, my employers are going to come to me for raises, so therefore I need to raise prices so you can

see where this goes. It just creates kind of this vicious cycle. Economists would call it a "wage-price spiral" whereas prices go higher, wages will go higher and then prices will continue

to go higher. And those things just start to chase each other. And it perpetuates this kind of vicious cycle of inflation that we've seen.