【推荐1】Try This at Home!

Are you looking for a new pastime that will create a balance between physical activity and relaxation? Then yoga may be the perfect choice for you. Yoga can be practiced by people of all ages and levels of fitness.    1     It's a great way to strengthen your muscles and become more flexible.

In the 1930s, Indian Sri Tirumali and K. Pattabhi developed one of the most popular forms of yoga practised worldwide today. They worked together using an ancient Sansknt text called Yoga Korunta to create a set routine of yoga movements and breathing exercises.     2    

Ashtanga is different from other forms of yoga. It is a very powerful form of aerobic (有氧的)exercise which creates deep heat in the body.     3     In other forms of yoga, however, the routine can change each time and the stretching exercises aren't aerobic.

    4    As well as making you stronger and more flexible, it can also help you to stay calm. By focusing on your breathing while doing physical exercise, you are able to get a balance between mind and body. In addition, yoga helps to make us healthier so we are less likely to get common illnesses like colds.

Furthermore, yoga encourages you to think about what you're doing. Often you will close your eyes while doing certain movements.    5    After a few lessons you'll stop looking at what the others around you are doing. You will stop comparing yourself and start focusing on yourself.

A．It can also be done anywhere at any time.

B．The result of their co-operation was ashtanga yoga.

C．Whatever kind of yoga you choose, there are many long-term benefits.

D．This allows you to concentrate better and it makes you less competitive.

E．Every time someone practices ashtanga, he or she does exactly the same movements.

F．If you're interested in yoga, but can find a class near you, then it might be     an excuse to travel.

G．Recently, it has become extremely common for beginners as well as advanced yoga students to go on yoga holidays.

【推荐3】Walking is the best form of exercise. It is good for the upper respiratory（与呼吸有关的）system and the legs. It helps us control our weight and blood sugar. Walking is also a good way to help you make more friends，bringing chances to see new things and meet new people. Personally I try to walk at least 5 miles daily.

As well as walking，I also cycle around Xiamen. Cycling is great for weight loss and helps to build stamina（耐力）.However，cycling does not allow for the same level of social contact as a walk. It is for this reason that I would strongly suggest that you try long-distance walking if you want to be physically healthy. I originally（最初）started walking around Xiamen because I didn't have a car，but I soon started to enjoy the walking for its own sake.

I have also made many friends during my walks. It's not uncommon for my 5-mile walk to sometimes take as long as 2 or 3 hours，because I stop to chat with different shop owners along my route. These days，if I skip my walk for even one day，the people in the shops may want to know why I didn't come.

I' ll never forget the first time some people followed me when I was walking, and asked if it was okay for them to walk with me. I really didn't know what to say, so I just replied that I didn't mind. I have been invited for lunch, dinner and sometimes just to sit and drink tea with total strangers. There is nothing more pleasant than walking past a schoolyard and hearing all the kids say hello to me.

1. Why did the author have to take a walk at the very beginning?

A．Because he wanted to build his body.

B．Because he enjoyed walking.

C．Because he had no car.

D．Because he wished to make friends.

2. The underlined word "skip" in the third paragraph is closest in meaning to __________.

A．jump lightly	B．give up
C．leave out	D．change quickly

3. What can be learned from the passage?

A．Cycling allows for no social contact.

B．Walking is better than cycling.

C．To be healthy，it's better to cycle.

D．The author prefers walking to cycling.

4. Why did the author tell us his walking experience in the last two paragraphs?

A．To share the unforgettable experience with us.

B．To show us the meaning of walking in social contact.

C．To tell us how to develop the habit of walking.

D．To explain to us why a usual walk took him as long as 2 or 3 hours.

【推荐1】Patients often come into my office and ask, “How can I look younger?” While I always suggest healthy living — a balanced diet and regular exercise — in order to look and feel younger, I have never thought of facial exercises as part of that plan. That is, until a recent study, published in JAMA Dermatology (皮肤学), showed promising results that routine facial exercise may slow the merciless tide of time.

The theory behind the study originates from the fact that a major part of facial aging is due to the loss of fat and soft tissue, which leads to the growth and spread of wrinkles. If we can lift weights at the gym and enlarge muscles in arms, why couldn’t the same be done for muscles in our faces, therefore to create a more youthful face?

The concept of facial exercise is not a new one. A simple Internet search will produce a lot of blog posts and books on the subject, as well as various programs that promise to be the next fountain of youth. What the JAMA Dermatology researchers did in their study, which was the first of its kind, was to examine this question from a more strict scientific aspect. They enrolled 27 women between the ages of 40 and 65 to perform daily, 30-minute exercises for eight weeks, and then continue every other day for a total of 20 weeks.

Dermatologists who did not know the participants were asked to rate their photographs before and after the exercise. The dermatologists found an improvement in cheek fullness and estimated the age of the participants at 51 years of age at the start of the program and 48 at the end of the 20-week study. Furthermore, all the participants felt improvement in their own facial appearance at the end of the study.

While these results seem exalting, the study has some obvious limitations. Of the 27 patients involved, 11 gave up before completing the study. One reason may be that the program was too time-consuming, clocking in at 30 minutes a day. The overall small size of the study also limits its generalizability to the larger population. In addition, there was also no control group, which would have helped reduce the possibility that this improvement happened by chance.

It’s also hard to draw conclusions about the longevity of these results. Probably the exercises must be continued to keep their effects. But for how long? And how frequently? Which exercises are most effective? Most studies are needed to answer these questions.

1. What is the author’s attitude towards the study published in JAMA Dermatology?

A．Doubtful.

B．Positive.

C．Opposed.

D．Indifferent

2. According to the passage, which statement is true?

A．Though the concept of facial exercise is new, much information about it can be found on the Internet.

B．Some participants did not feel improvement in their facial appearance at the end of the study.

C．If there is a control group, the possibility that the improvement in the facial appearance happened by chance will be increased.

D．The reason why some participants quit the study before it was completely may be that they had not enough time.

3. What does the underlined word exalting mean?

A．Exciting.

B．Challenging.

C．Frustrating.

D．Calming.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The study published in JAMA Dermatology is not reliable.

B．Healthy living is the only way to make someone look and feel young.

C．More studies are needed to further the present study on facial exercises.

D．As a dermatologist, the author was involved in the research project on facial exercises.

【推荐3】Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.
Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.
Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.
Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.
1. Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because _______.

A．they are close in style to works in ancient times

B．they look like works by 19th-century painters

C．they draw attention to common things in life

D．they depend heavily on color photography

2. What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?

A．It will not be found in future works of art.

B．It does not have a long-lasting standard.

C．It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.

D．It is lacking in modern works of art.

3. What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?

A．They express people's curiosity about the past.

B．They make people interested in everyday experience.

C．They are considered important for variety in form.

D．They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation.