Bài Tập Trắc Nghiệm Chuyên Đề: Mục đích của tác giả (Tiếng Anh Lớp 10, 11, 12)

Some companies seem to have a knack for revolutionizing any market that they enter. They produce innovative new products that sell in huge numbers, change people's expectations and become world famous. In the movie world, for example, you may know Pixar and Dreamworks. Online, you are probably familiar with the Google and Facebook. In the computer world, there is one name that instantly comes to mind. That company is Apple.
The beginning of Apple is a legendary story. In 1976, twenty-one year old Steve Jobs started the company from his family home in California. He worked with computer scientist Steve Wozinak, and businessman Ronald Wayne, to develop, build, and market a personal computer, their first product. These first computers were not very slick or professional, but they were definitely innovative. The Apple I was the first low-cost computer system to have built-in video capabilities. This means it was able to display its output on a TV screen. Following the success of Apple I, Apple launched a second computer in 1977. This model came with its own monitor and keyboard and was called the Apple II increased when it was chosen as the platform for the first spreadsheet program, called VisiCalc. This made the Apple II popular with business users as well.
Apple's next innovative success came in January 1984 when it released the Apple Macintosh. It was the first commercially successful computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI). Before the Macintosh, computer users operated their computer by typing instructions on a keyboard. Now they could operate their computer by pointing and clicking on the GUI with a mouse The Macintosh inspired many similar operating system, including Microsoft Windows.
Visionary founder, Steve Jobs, left Apple in 1985 and the company's reputation for innovation seemed to leave with him. However, when Jobs returned to his old job in 1996, he quickly revitalized the company. Most people are familiar with Apple’s success since Job’s return. Starting in 1998 and continuing to the present day, Apple has release several new and very popular production including the iMac (1998), the iPod (2001), the iPhone (2007), and finally the iPad (2010). All these products combined stylish good looks with a powerful, simple to use, operating system – a combination that is very popular with customers. These days, Apple’s reputation for innovation is second to none.

For most undergraduates today, opening a laptop at the start of a lecture has become as automatic as sitting down. The device is no longer a tool consciously chosen; it is simply there, blinking softly, ready to absorb every word that the instructor utters. Yet researchers who study students' attention argue that this convenience comes at a price most learners are unaware that they are paying.

A recent multi-campus study tracked the in-class behaviour of nearly two thousand undergraduates across humanities and science courses. Even when students claimed to be "fully focused," eye-tracking data showed that they shifted between unrelated tabs an average of fourteen times per fifty-minute session. The students themselves were astounded when they were shown the results. Many had believed that they were absorbing every point made in class.

The findings underline an unsettling truth: digital multitasking is not just inefficient; it is invisible to those engaged in it. Cognitive scientists describe this as "the illusion of competence" – the false sense that because information has passed beneath one's eyes, it has been understood and stored. Tests administered a week after the lectures consistently revealed otherwise, with laptop-using students recalling roughly a third less than those taking handwritten notes.

Things go from bad to worse when we take into account the fact that the very tools that distract students are also genuinely essential for some forms of academic work. Annotating digital texts, accessing research databases and recording lectures all benefit from screen-based learning. The crucial question for tertiary institutions, then, is not to get rid of devices altogether but to teach students when and how to set them aside. Until that skill is cultivated, the lecture hall may continue to function less as a place of collective inquiry and more as a quiet place of solitary screens.

(Adapted from https://vanderbilthustler.com)

In the 1960s, the first human explorations of space began. Today scientists often debate the future of manned space flight. Should we aim for the moon again, or for Mars? It always comes down to concerns about the length and expense of such journeys. Mars is a much more difficult challenge than the moon.
Mars is so far away that is world take about two years for a human crew to complete the round trip, including time spent to the planet's surface. On the other hand, we know the moon can be visited in a fraction of that time, as was proven by the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Distance poses other dilemmas. A popular movie, Apollo 13, tells the exciting story of how NASA managed to rescue the astronauts of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission to the moon. With the tremendous distance between Earth and Mars, emergency retrievals like this would be impossible. The moon seems more feasible from this point of view.
As with most projects, the crux of the matter is economics. In fact, NASA has estimated that a manned flight to Mars would cost five hundred billion dollars! Critics argue that Mars is too far and the moon is too useless to us to justify any manned space flights at all. Nevertheless, should we choose to go ahead with space travel, it seems that returning to the moon is a much more likely proposition than Mars.

desert plants have developed similar strategies for surviving in arid environments. Some plants have adapted in such a way that it is hard to tell them apart even though they belong to very different biological families, one evolution of certain survival strategies which are shared across geographic and biological boundaries.
In general, the survival strategies of desert plants can be divided into two kinds: adaptation for quick use of ephemeral resources (“maximum variance behavior”) and adaptation for the best use of poor but more permanent resources (“minimum variance behavior”). The former strategy involves adaptation to environmental changes, such as seasonal availability of water. This is observed in desert annuals and perennials alike. Such plants tend to grow rapidly and produce many seeds under the right conditions. The latter strategy involves adaptation to the worst possible conditions, which can be seen in succulents, true xerophytes, and grasses. These plants usually grow slowly, use water efficiently, and exhibit passive cooling.
Water scarcity and heat are the key factors limiting the survival of desert plants. [I] Depending on strategies and physical adaptations, they can be divided into either succulents or drought-resistant plants. For the most part, succulents have evolved extensive, shallow root systems to quickly absorb water during brief periods of heavy rainfall. [II] Water is then stored in the fleshy tissue of their thick trunks or lobes, as well as in the roots. The cactus is a good example of a succulent. [III] To retain water, succulents have waxy coatings on their skin and a modified system of respiration. The stomata (surface pores), through which the plant takes in carbon dioxide and releases oxygen, open only at night when temperatures are cooler and less water from the plant will evaporate. [IV] Unlike most other plants, a succulent stores all or most of its chlorophyll, the chemical essential to photosynthesis, in its stem, skin, or other outer tissues, rather than concentrating it in the leaves. Doing this places it in a strong, well-watered part of the plant, rather than in an appendage susceptible to drying out and dropping off.
Drought-resistant plants, or xerophytes, come in many forms including true xerophytes, deciduous plants, and grasses. Xerophytic shrubs, such as the five species of creosote bush, are the most abundant type of vegetation in most arid environments. They are able to withstand desiccation in severe droughts without dying. Some have evolved small leaves with special coatings to reduce loss of water through evaporation. Others have replaced leaves with thorns or spines. While succulent roots form shallow, dense webs, xerophytes tend to develop deep root networks that pull water out of soil other desert plants cannot reach. For example, the roots of the mesquite bush, said to have the deepest root systems among desert plants, can reach depths of up to eighty feet.
Succulents and xerophytes, on the one hand, have physically adapted to gather and retain water to survive long periods of drought. Drought-avoiding plants, on the other hand, escape unfavorable conditions by perishing. These include annuals and perennials. Because profuse seed development is crucial to the survival of most annual species, they tend to produce far more flowers than other types of desert plants. The desert marigold of the American southwest, for example, has adapted to seasonal changes in rainfall by growing rapidly, bursting into a brilliant display of yellow flowers, and then dropping a cascade of seeds before dying. In some cases, annuals complete their entire life cycle in a matter of a few weeks or months. Their seeds may remain inactive for up to ten years while waiting for wetter conditions. Perennials, such as the ocotillo, may go dormant during dry periods, spring to life when it rains, and then return to dormancy in a process that may occur up to five times per year.
(Adapted from Expert on Cambridge IELTS practice tests)