1.Describe a place of interest in your hometown

=> I live in New York with my parents. There are a good number of interesting places to see and visit here. But the New York Public Library is more interesting to me than any other places.

I am a citizen of the USA by birth but my parents are not. They came here in search of living from Larissa in Greece during the 1980s. They have been living for around 36 years in this city. After my birth and I got matured enough, they took me to different interesting places to visit in the New York City, and these places are really interesting. But being an introvert, I disliked the crowds and the public library appeared to be more interesting to me than other places. The place is filled with books on numerous issues, magazines, documents and many other things. The classics available in the library were my favourite.

Going to the library is easier for me. In fact, this is not far away from my residence. The New York Public Library is only a 10-minute walk from my home. It remains open from 10 am to 8 pm, except the weekends. Usually, I go there in the evening and read books or novels until the library is closed. Besides, the library is accessible from the other parts of the city. The people who want to visit the library can reach here using several transportation modes. They can reach the library by taxi, metro or by their private cars. But the people who live nearby, like me, come here mostly on foot.

The New York Public Library is a great place to read. But the people who come here are not readers always. Some of them are researchers, while some others may be historians or musicians. Actually, the library is visited by a wide range of people. Basically, the library comes with the reading facilities. But there is also the scope to check the reference books, peep on the music directory or crosscheck any history. Besides, the reading rooms are well expanded and the readers have ample opportunities to use the books and references after their needs. But they have to be careful with the books. Silence among the readers while reading books is expected there.

Reading books may appear boring to many but it is very interesting to me. I love reading books. The books help us to know the unknown and unseen. The experiences of past thousand years have been preserved in books in words. So, when I read them, it appears that I am travelling through time! But every place is not suitable for reading and it requires a very special environment. Hence, I think a library is a nice place to read. At the same time, it is an interesting place as an enriched collection of books are available together. In fact, it is impossible for an individual to collect a part of the books of this library in his entire life. So, I find more interest in reading books in a calm place and the New York Public Library is a place I would recommend to a tourist.

Topic 2:Saving energy

1. Personally, I prefer life of the country to the city. There are many reasons why I like it. First of all, in the country is very quiet, which brings me the peace and the comfort. Second of all, living in the country helps me avoid the noise of vehicles and the smoke, dust from them such as motorbikes, cars, trucks and so on. So this is good for my health. Thirdly, people in the country are very friendly and hospitable. If you live in urban areas, you couldn’t know your neighbors. This makes me boried and lonely. Finally, the costs of living in the city are much higher than that in the country. The prices of goods are also very high. Because of the disadvantages of living in the city, I want to live and work in the country.

1) Talk about a natural wonder and man made natural in Vietnam.

Bài làm:

I’m writing from the most beautiful and incredible place in the world that I have ever seen during my 15-year career as a travel writer in more than 70 countries. I’m writing to you from Ha Long Bay in Vietnam.

There is a saying that if you have not visited Ha Long Bay you have not yet been to Vietnam. I say that if you have not visited Ha Long Bay you have not yet seen the most beautiful place in the world.

180 km from Hanoi City, towards the northeast, it takes around 4 hours by bus due to the speed limit, and then you will arrive to Ha Long City and the wonderful Ha Long Bay.

1969 limestone islands of various shapes, sizes, and in different green and amazing colors rise above the sea level in an area of more than 1,500 square kilometers that creates this World Heritage site. Ha Long Bay still retains its historical and culture values.

The guide told me that Ha Long Bay has been twice recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1994 and 2000, and also that Ha Long Bay is in second place in the worldwide competition of the World’s Seven Natural Wonders. I told him that before all, God has given the Vietnamese people this wonder for their kindness.

Ha Long Bay is as attractive and beautiful throughout the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Traveling on small sailboats among hundreds of limestone islands, one may visit the amazing Surprise Cave, the floating fishing village, and see how the locals live are top of the list of things to do here. On Titop Island, one may swim and relax on the beach or enjoy a kayaking program to the nearby Luon Cave and much more.

And what about the important question of where to sleep? Syrena Cruises and other cruises are offering wonderful programs. A luxury cruise from the harbor and across Ha Long Bay, has 34 luxury cabins and suites each with a balcony, as well as restaurants and a meeting room on the 3rd deck. Travelers may experience Asian or Western cuisine, precisely sea food, and also have a session with a massage therapist, unwind in the sauna, take a sunbath and relax on the expansive deck, experience squid fishing, movie night, and a cooking demonstration.

Other attractions during your stay in Ha Long, beside exploring Ha Long Bay itself, if to visit the Royal Park in Halong City, Water Music, a circus performance by dolphins, sea lions, crocodiles, and much more.

The experience of visiting Ha Long Bay is unforgettable, where you will see something that will stay in your mind and eyes for years. You will enjoy meeting Vietnamese people and tasting their delicious food, you will have fresh air all day and night, especially if you wake up early in the morning and watch the sun rise on the deck coming slowly through the islands.

Be sure not to miss visiting Ha Long Bay in your lifetime. Just try to watch images and videos of this stunning and marvelous place and imagine being there experiencing the beauty and kindness of Vietnamese people. You will be booking your trip in no time.
2) Write about the advantages and disadvantages of living in a big city in Vietnam.

Bài làm:

Nowadays, more and more people choose to live in the city. In this essay, I will discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of living in the city.

It can't be denied that living in the city has many benefits. First of all, if we live in the city, we will have many chances get the developing science and technology. It means that we will have more job opportunities and broaden our knowledge more easily. Secondly, we will have many different ways to spend our free time. There are a lot of theatres, concerts and other kinds of entertainment. There is always a lot to do and visit There are a lot of possibilities of shopping. In various shopping centres and galleries you can buy whatever you want. What is more, a big city is a potential market for trading activities, so we can earn more money to provide our family a comfortable life

Besides advantages, living in the city brings to us a lot of disadvantages. Firstly, a problem about which everyone is worrying is environment. The increase of factories based on industrialization and modernization has severely polluted environment. Smoke from factories' chimneys not only pollutes the air but also makes people get many serious cancers. Sewage is bumped into rivers without being purged, which threatens underwater ecosystems. The second drawback of living in the city is society's vices such as drug addiction. Young people. especially the students, are easily spoiled by bad habits. If people use up all the money, they can't control themselves and even become robbers or murders. Moreover, a problem that many people living in the city have is heartlessness. With some people, it's not worth being worried and it has no effect on our life, people are too busy to care for any others. But if more and more people become heartless, the society will be worse, no one cares another one, they live boring lives, every purposes became meaningless, without love, sympathy and many other good things.

There are good things as well as bad thing of living in the city. However, I strongly believed that advantages outweigh disadvantages. If people know how to live and enjoy their life, living in the city is one of the most interesting things that people want to experience.

3) Talk about a traditional craft village in Biên Hòa. (có thể ở Vietnam)

Bài làm:

Bat Trang Pottery Village is located in the center of Red river delta, it is a part of Bat Trang Commune, Gia Lam District, Hanoi. north of Vietnam. It is 13 kilometers away from center of Hanoi south east of Hanoi, on the Red river, It has been famous for its ceramics for a thousand years, particularly dinnerware and ornamental ware. The Bat Trang producers export ceramic goods annually to the value of over $40 million a year.

Perhaps the most outstanding strength of Hanoi Bat Trang Pottery Village is its tradition of making pottery. The people are very skilful and talented, producing a product that has a distinctive look. Bat Trang Pottery Village traditional quality pottery includes bowl, dish, pot, cup, wine pot, a big flower-vase, leg lamp, lime-pot, big-bellied jar with glazes such as ancient pearl blaze, crackle glaze, dark glaze, indigo-blue flower glaze, grey flower glaze, melt glaze... Craftsmanship developed over many generations.

Bat Trang Pottery Village ceramics are produced for daily household use (bow, cup, plates, pot, bottle…), worshipping, or decoration purposes. Nowadays, the pottery artists bring into ceramics many innovations in production techniques, and creativity in products’ features, hence many new products have been born, and even daily household items may have the beauty like decoration ones.

Visiting Bat Trang Pottery Village , tourists can take a walk or join a buffalo tour for sightseeing and shopping. Besides many ceramic stores along the road in the village, tourists should visit Bat Trang Porcelain and Pottery Market where they can directly make pottery products by themselves. Many youngsters and foreign tourists are interested in in this pottery- making experience, and spend a whole day in the market to make a gift for family or friends.

4) Compare the differences in the past and present .

Bài làm:

Làm về giáo dục :

Past: In terms of education in the past, people rarely got the chance to educate themselves. Farmers made sure that their children knew how to plot a farm and carry out their daily work. Yet with time, people went to the religious institutes like church, temple, kovil and mosque in order to learn. Later with the industrial revolution and factories and equipment coming into action, even the children of the agricultural families were sent to the town to learn how to work with machinery. Then later with colonization, people started learning languages and sciences with the improvement in knowledge. The most important fact is that all these changes in education happened only in the lives of the males as the females were kept at home to do the daily work like sweeping, sewing, painting, embroidery, cleaning and looking after children.

Present: With the revolutions and freedom actions taking place all over the world, females started to fight for their rights in terms of voting, education, and politics. These freedom fights were granted after several struggles. Today, women have the opportunity to get a good education despite their religion, ethnicity, and race .

People now have access to books, magazines, and the internet and students are much advanced in terms of education and access to knowledge. However, as mentioned in the beginning, there are exceptions to these facilities.

4) Do we teenagers in Vietnam need all or some of these skills? Why or why not?

Bài làm:

In a constantly changing environment, having life skills is an essential part of being able to meet the challenges of everyday life. The dramatic changes in global economies over the past five years have been matched with the transformation in technology and these are all impacting on education, the workplace and our home life. To cope with the increasing pace and change of modern life, students need new life skills such as the ability to deal with stress and frustration. Today’s students will have many new jobs over the course of their lives, with associated pressures and the need for flexibility.

Benefits for the individual

In everyday life, the development of life skills helps students to:

• Find new ways of thinking and problem solving
• Recognise the impact of their actions and teaches them to take responsibility for what they do rather than blame others
• Build confidence both in spoken skills and for group collaboration and cooperation
• Analyse options, make decisions and understand why they make certain choices outside the classroom
• Develop a greater sense of self-awareness and appreciation for others

Benefits for employment

While students work hard to get good grades, many still struggle to gain employment. According to research by the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) in 2011 employers were looking not just for academic success but key employability skills including:

• The ability to self-manage, solve problems and understand the business environment
• Working well as part of a team
• Time and people management
• Agility and adaptability to different roles and flexible working environments
• The potential to lead by influence

• Benefits for society

  The more we develop life skills individually, the more these affect and benefit the world in which we live:

• Recognising cultural awareness and citizenship makes international cooperation easier
• Respecting diversity allows creativity and imagination to flourish developing a more tolerant society
• Developing negotiation skills, the ability to network and empathise can help to build resolutions rather than resentments

5) What skills do you think Vietnam teens should have today?

Bài làm:

Even during the best of times, parents wonder whether their teens are developing all the skills they need to be successful in life. A problem in this “appraisal” process is that parents see their teens in some of their most regressed and infantile states—when they are at home with their families! Furthermore, new neuroscience research indicates that the human brain does not reach maturity until a person reaches their early twenties. So, how do parents of teens know what to look for in the development of life skills?

My short answer is “headway.” Parents want to see headway — progress — in their teens’ development of the top 10 life skills and be mindful of what they can do to nudge them along. But we also need to be realistic and sensitive to special considerations of temperament, learning style and circumstances.

1. Motivation for personal goals: initiative, engagement, willingness to try new things, persistence, work ethic, commitment, and a drive to pursue interests and personal development. Qualifier: The teen’s zeal may be for DJ skills, not physics.

2. Executive functioning skills: planning ahead; organization; execution and completion of projects; informed decision making; judgment; concentration; and self-monitoring. Qualifier: Half of the neuronal connections in the prefrontal cortex will be sloughed off in early adolescence, so harebrained inconsistency is the norm with teens.

3. Independent living skills and self-reliance: self-management with regard tomoney, cooking, laundry; public transportation; and job experience (with job application, interviewing, working hard, accepting criticism and following directions). Qualifier: Kids will squawk, but parents should insist on this stuff anyway.

4. Academic skills: basic skills to achieve age-appropriate educational goals; intellectual curiosity; study habits; and value on learning. Qualifier: Especially in middle school and during puberty, school performance may get a bit sketchy, but education is such a high priority that parents should go to the mat to make sure teens are “bonded” to school, establish homework habits, connect with teachers and do required work.

5. Physical fitness and healthful habits: value and self-care in relation to exercise, sleep, eating, health maintenance, and limitations on risk taking, substance use and media overuse. Qualifier: Parents can only control so much, but they control resources, so they can supply healthful food, yank media, insist on full-year athletic participation, and give consequences for problem substance use.

6. Emotional awareness, reflection and regulation: recognition and appropriate expression of feelings; empathy for others; ability to control impulses; and coping with negative emotions. Qualifier: Due to mood disturbance brought on by hormones and the immaturity of the “impulse control” center in the teen brain, teens will have tizzies, and parents need to focus on being supportive coaches and role models for these skills.

7. Social skills: ability to size up interpersonal situations; cooperation with others; communication skills; conflict resolution skills; gaining perspective; and accurate self-appraisal in groups. Qualifier: Since teens are individuating from their parents and constantly irritated with siblings, motivated practice of these skills will occur in other pro-social settings (e.g., school, service, extracurricular activities and friendships).

8. Relationship skills and values: ability to maintain relationships over time; friendship development; conversational ability; balancing needs of self and other inromantic relationships; and intimacy skills. Qualifier: Temperament plays a huge role in determining a person’s appetite for social interaction, but parents can encourage, model and provide a rich web of relationships for their teens, including those with wise elders.

9. Moral behavior, integrity and character: standing up for what’s right; conscientiousness; and responsibility for oneself and the less fortunate. Qualifier: Although the majority of teens will take risks, lie and break rules during these arousal-seeking years, they will also show remarkable attachment to “what’s right” — according to them. By the time these kids reach their mid-twenties, values have shifted, morphed, matured and become integrated into a system that usually reflects a lot of their parents’ values.

10. Spirituality and a purposeful life: ability to accept and cope with adversities; emotional resilience; drive for a meaningful life; and a value on reflection and growth over time. Qualifier: Patience and parental role modeling are key here (again).

The worst thing a parent could do with this list of qualities is to preach, lecture and talk too much about them to their teen. That would be like pelting a teen with fruits and vegetables and expecting it to provide good nutrition.

Laura Kastner, Ph.D., is the co-author, along with Jennifer F. Wyatt, Ph.D., of the book, Getting to Calm: Cool-headed Strategies for Raising Tweens and Teens, and is a clinical associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington.

TK:

Topic 1:Life skills for teens

Money may not be the most important thing in life, but it certainly is vital for a comfortable life. Education gives you the knowledge and some skills you need to become employable. But it may not give you the skills to manage your earnings and spending, save money, etc. In simple words, you need to make your teenagers financially literate. Every teen must know how to open a bank account, use the ATM,transfer money online and write a check.Save money to buy or invest in something, for emergencies.Knowing how to procure food or cook food is one of the primary life skills for teenagers.Buying groceries is important to cook. One of the important skills here is to be able to identify different ingredients and know where they are available.Among the critical things that teens should learn, as part of taking care of themselves, is to take care of their health.Knowledge of personal health and over-the-counter medications that can come in handy.Knowing when to go to the doctor.Taking proper care of self, through proper diet and environment, in the case of illnesses like common colds, fever or the flu.

Topic 2:Talk about children’s pastimes in the past.

About 20 years ago, Vietnamese children used to play outdoor games. They play games such as hide and seek, blindfolded to catch goats, dragon snake or even wrestling. The games are simple but they leave a lot of impressions. Children today, however, do not ignore such games, because computers and phones inhibit their development. So, you should hanging out with friend, phaying sport so you can get the most out of your health.

TK:
Topic 3:Talk about a wonder of Viet Nam

Ha Long Bay is not only known as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but also one of the world famous natural wonders. The most widely circulated stories are told that: all the big and small islands on Halong Bay are pearls and pearls released by the Mother Dragon, forming strong ramparts to help people. fight against foreign invaders. Each cave in the bay also contains a mysterious story that is colorful stories reflecting the spiritual and emotional life of Vietnamese people such as love couples, dreams of rich and poor in life. live… Ha Long Bay is truly a world wonder, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Vietnam. This is also the place where you can enjoy swimming on the beautiful untouched beaches, boating on the blue water; explore the towering rocky mountains that seem to soar into the blue sky on the islands; Enjoy fresh local seafood dishes while watching the beautiful sunset or sunrise.