【推荐1】Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to afford all of that fancy equipment used in the gyms?     1     Now here are some effective exercises that you can do at home, without the need for any equipment.

Jumping Jacks (开合跳)—These are always fun, as they bring back memories of being a kid!     2    Well, surprise- they are also great aerobic exercise, and good for warming up, too.

Pushups—While they can be hard to do, you can find easier ways to do them. You don’t need to pretend you’re “Rocky”, and do them with one hand; just do what works for you.     3    Or, do them standing up against a wall. You will be building up arm strength and working out muscles(肌肉) in your chest area.

Light weight lifting—No, you don’t need to go out and buy expensive weights for this !Just use whatever you can find in your house. Start out with something lighter, such as a can of peas.     4    

Step exercises—Using the steps in your home, you can do repetitions which will strengthen your leg muscles. (Just remember to be careful! )

    5    You needn’t join a gym, paying a large amount in membership fees each month. You don’t even need the expensive equipment. Use what you have in your house, and work out in the comfort of your home. You will be more likely to keep up with the exercise when you’re comfortable, so just get up and start exercising !

A．Now you have no excuses!

B．Getting some exercise is important.

C．And work yourself up to heavier items little by little.

D．Who has not done jumping jacks for fun as a child?

E．Nice as it sounds, it just isn’t an option for most people.

F．Do them on your knees, instead of keeping your legs straight.

G．To make these exercises even more fun, you can watch TV while doing them.

【推荐3】Why Walking is Good for Weight Loss

The best form of exercise is walking. Casual walk for thirty to forty minutes can do wonders for the body.     1    . Displayed below are reasons.

Help to burn calories（卡路里）

A daily walk routine can help to burn calories. Walking for thirty minutes a day can help to burn about three to four hundred calories per day. A daily walk helps to burn 100 calories per mile.     2    .

Help to improve energy level

There could be a possibility of drying up with other stressful forms of exercises. This is not possible with walking.     3    . With burning calories, it helps to stay active and fit throughout the day.

    4    

Walking helps to decrease the risk of health related diseases and infections（传染病）. In fact, with weight loss it helps to maintain a normal heart rate. Walking for weight loss is good as it helps to stay active and fit. It burns fat, but helps to strengthen the immune system of the body.

Help in planning

    5    . It doesn’t like gym and other types of exercises. There is no proper planning required for walking. The progress is easy to track, there are many smart apps which are available for walk and weight loss. It helps to keep a track on calories burned to lose weight.

A．Help to stay energetic

B．Walking doesn’t cost much

C．Help to decrease health risks

D．It is best to walk daily to keep a good body shape

E．Walking is perhaps the easiest form of daily exercise but benefits us a lot

F．Walking helps in weight loss, but at the same time it improves your energy

G．Starting a particular weight loss plan is easy, but continuing with the plan is difficult

【推荐1】We all have a tendency to fake laugh, particularly when authority figures in our lives try to make a joke that just doesn’t land. Though it might feel rude not to laugh when your in-laws or boss try to say something funny, pretending to do so might not be much better. It turns out, even if you think that your forced laughing sounds genuine, people are usually pretty good at separating truly spirited belly laughs from fake ones. But how can they possible know the difference?

Well, when researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles studied the acoustic and perceptual differences between real and fake laughter, they found that some of the sounds associated with genuine laughter is “really hard to fake.” In their study, the researchers determined that subjects were only fooled by 37 percent of fake laughter.

The most prominent factor distinguishing real laughter from fake laughter is duration — or, more specifically, the number of breaths taken in in between sounds. Seeing as it takes more effort and concentration to fake a laugh as opposed to do it genuinely, people tend to pause more in between their “ha-ha’s” when they’re faking it. Evidently, that pausing is pretty noticeable.

“A fake laugh is basically an imitation of a real laugh, but produced with a slightly different set of vocal muscles controlled by a different part of our brain,” Greg Bryant, the lead UCLA researcher on the study, explained. “The result is that there are subtle features of the laugh that sound like speech, and ... people are unconsciously quite sensitive to them.”

People have also proven to be emotionally sensitive to laughter as well. “Our rains are very sensitive to the social and emotional significance of laughter,” said Carolyn McGettigan, a scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London.

McGettigan conducted a 2014 study that recorded participants’ brain responses as they listened to the same people produce genuine laughter by watching funny videos, as opposed to fake laughter. “During our study, when participants heard a laugh that was posed, they activated regions of the brain associated with mentalizing in an attempt to understand the other person’s emotional and mental state,” she said.

So, while we may understand that certain social situations sometimes require fake laughter, most of the time, our instincts and emotional intelligence are just too smart to buy into them.

According to McGettigan, that’s a good thing. “Evolutionarily speaking, it’s good to be able to detect if someone is authentically experiencing an emotion or if they’re not,” she said. “Because you don’t want to be fooled.”

1. What do researchers at the University of California want to find out in this study?

A．What is the difference between a fake laugh and a real one.

B．Which part of the brain controls the sound of our laughter.

C．Why do people need to fake laugh when they don’t want to.

D．How to laugh as genuinely as possible when you are faking it.

2. Your forced laughing is more noticeable than you think, mainly because_______.

A．you seem more concentrated when you laugh for real

B．you take more breaths when you try to fake a laugh

C．a fake laugh often happens after a sudden pause

D．a real laugh usually lasts longer than a fake one

3. What has Carolyn McGettigan’s 2014 study proven?

A．Certain social situations may require us to fake a laugh.

B．Evolution has enabled us to recognize other’s emotions.

C．By instincts, we are able to tell a person’s mental state.

D．We can sense other’s emotional state when they laugh.

【推荐2】Alpha, Beta, Delta…these Greek letters used to only appear in our math classes but are now popping up in news headlines.

Now, it’s Lambda. As the Delta variant spreads throughout communities in Asia, Europe and the United States, another variant, Lambda, is spreading rapidly throughout South America, Forbes reported on Aug 10.

On May 31, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a naming system for variants of the coronavirus that uses letters of the Greek alphabet. Before that, the public had to call a variant its scientific name or refer to it based on where it was identified.

For example, a strain (菌株) of COVID-19 identified in South Africa in late 2020 was called variant 501Y. V2 or B. 1.351. Media also called the same virus. “the South African variant”. Now, everyone calls it “Beta”.

Compared to complicated scientific names, the Greek letters are much easier to remember. “It is a lot easier for a radio newsreader to say ‘Delta’ than bee-one-six-one-seven-two,” Jeffrey Barrett, a UK statistical geneticist told Nature.

WHO hopes this change will help combat the stigma (污名) associated with geography-based names. “I can understand why people just call it the South African variant-they don’t mean anything by it,” Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist in South Africa, told Nature. “The problem is, if we allow it to continue, there are people who have an a goal and will use it.”

“No country should be stigmatized for detecting and reporting variants,” Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, wrote on Twitter.

As the virus is still evolving, 11 mutations (变种) have been named as recently as Sept 1. What if the 24 Greek letters are not enough? “We will possibly run out of the Greek alphabet, but we’re already looking at the next series of names,” Van Kerkhove told The Telegraph. “We’re actually considering star constellations (星座).”

Currently, the Virus Evolution Working Group and WHO’s legal team are double checking proposals to “make sure we don’t upset anyone with these names”, Van Kerkhove told The Telegraph.

In the future, will there be a “Virgo variant” or an “Orion variant”? Let’s hope not, but only time will tell.

1. How did the Lambda variant get its name?

A．It was named after the place where it’s widespread.

B．It was named after a letter of the Greek alphabet.

C．It was named for a scientific term.

D．It was named after the place where it was identified.

2. What is the main idea of paragraphs 5-7?

A．Problems scientific variant names can cause.

B．The importance of reporting variants immediately.

C．Reasons for no longer naming variants after places.

D．Advantages of naming the variants after Greek letters.

3. Why are scientists looking for a new series of names?

A．The current naming system can cause legal problems.

B．There might be more variants than Greek letters.

C．People prefer to name variants after stars.

D．The current naming system caused confusion.

4. Which of the following would be the best title of the passage?

A．Renaming of COVID-19 variants

B．Greek letters that appear in the math classes

C．A strain of COVID-19 identified in South Africa

D．A battle of fighting against the stigma associated with geography-based names

【推荐3】“Do not tell anyone”. We often hear these words when someone tells us a secret. But keeping a secret is hard. We’re often tempted to “spill the beans”, even if we regret it later.

According to the professor, Asim Shah, keeping a secret may well “become a burden”. This is because people often have an “eager and anxious urge to share it with someone”. An earlier study, led by Anita, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.

Secrets are so often getting out. Why do people share them at all? Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other. “Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone, ”according to Shah.

He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out. But this doesn’t mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.

Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you’d better put yourself in their position. Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn’t give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone’s secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn’t so secret any more.

1. What does the underlined phrase “spill the beans” mean?

A．Keep silent.

B．Tell the truth.

C．Let out a secret.

D．Eat our words.

2. How many reasons are mentioned in Para.3 why people tend to share secrets?

A．2.

B．3.

C．4.

D．5.

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．Quiet people are more likely to keep the secrets to themselves.

B．Sharing secrets helps establish friendship or get over the sense of guilt.

C．A person asked to keep a secret will suffer from psychological problems only.

D．Putting yourself in others’ shoes helps realize the difficulty of keeping secrets.

【推荐1】In the Amazon rainforest, which is home to various kinds of wildlife, an American biologist has discovered a strange new species of ant, The Times reported. It has no eyes and gets a pale body and its fanglike mouthparts are longer than the rest of its head.

If you came across the peculiar ant, you might think that it belongs on another planet. Even its name— Martialis Heureka— playfully suggests that it came from Mars. And this discovery is forcing researchers to rethink what they know about the history of ants on our planet.

Christian Rabeling, from the University of Texas at Austin, discovered the new species amid the fallen leaves of the rainforest. But he did more than just notice how bizarre the ant looks. He also analyzed its genetic material, or DNA.

Comparing DNA among species can give scientists insights into family trees: The more DNA two species share in common, the more closely related they are, and the more recently they split off from ancestor.

Rabeling’s DNA analysis of Martialis Heureka showed that the species is only distantly related to other ant species. It’s so distant that it actually belonging in a separate subfamily. The last minute scientists found a new subfamily of living ants was in 1923, say the discoverers.

The DNA analysis also suggested that Martialis Heureka appeared on earth earlier than any other an living here today. And observations suggest that the ant lives undergound, paleness and blindness are two major clues. Some of the other oldest known ant species also live underground. So now, scientists are trying to figure out whether ants first evolved underground, or if they evolved above ground and then went under. A few other ant species have at least one of Martialis Heureka’s odd features, but none share them all.

So far, Rabeling has collected only one ant from the new species. Finding more specimens, he hopes, will help us better understand the science and history of ants on earth.

1. The underlined word “bizarre” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to________.

A．funny	B．peculiar
C．unique	D．distinct

2. What did the scientists find about Martialis Heureka?

A．It’s closely related to other ant species.

B．It is the first ant to appear on earth.

C．It lives underground where it first developed.

D．Blindness and light color indicates it lives underground.

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Martialis Heureka was found by accident.

B．Much is to be done to collect more ants.

C．Little known about the ant history.

D．More ants from the new species are needed

【推荐2】I suppose that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. And especially if it’s given from the heart. When people are talking, there’s no need to do anything but receive them. Listen to what they’re saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don’t value ourselves or our love enough to know this. It has taken me a long time to believe in the power of simple saying “I’m so sorry,” when someone is in pain.
One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story people often interrupted to tell her that they once had something just like that happening to them. Her pain became a story about themselves. Eventually she stopped talking to most people. We connect through listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand，we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen, they know we care.
I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the handkerchiefs, until I realized that passing a person a handkerchief may be just another way to shut him down，to take them out of their experience of sadness. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.
This simple thing has not been that easy to learn. It certainly went against everything I had been taught since I was very young. I thought people listened only because they were too shy to speak or did not know the answer. But now I know that a loving silence often has far more power to heal than the kindest words.
1. What does the author value most in the communication with each other?

A．Deep understanding.	B．Saying “I’m sorry”.
C．Attention from heart.	D．Doing nothing.

2. The woman patient stopped telling her story to most people because________.

A．she didn’t get enough respect from others

B．she was discouraged by being often interrupted

C．people often told her their own opinions

D．people couldn’t understand her sad situation

3. If you hand a handkerchief to someone crying, you may________.

A．hurt his feelings

B．make him embarrassed

C．encourage him to continue to cry

D．stop him from letting out his sorrow

4. It can be inferred from the passage that while communicating, ________.

A．listening is a perfect way to respond to others

B．people keep silent because they don’t know the answer

C．keeping silent means being too shy to speak

D．it is easy to form the habit of listening silently

【推荐3】Small talk is a good way to make friends. If you travel to other countries or have friends from abroad, do you know how to use small talk to make conversation?

In Britain, the best topic is the weather. British weather is changing all the time.     1    

Besides weather, it's good to talk about gardens with British. You could say "Those roses look really beautiful, don't they?'*     2     So it's also nice to start with "What a lovely dog! What is his name?”

In America, people like to talk about sports news, such as American football and basketball.     3     So you might say "It's a nice shirt! Where did you get it?" Weather is a safe topic there, too.

    4     Don't ask people "How old are you?" Never ask: "How much money do you make?"It makes people uncomfortable. Don't ask strangers weather they are married.     5     There are others in our daily life.

A．English people love their pets.

B．Americans also talk about clothes.

C．Politics or religion is not a good topic.

D．Only a few topics are not used for small talk.

E．There are also a lot of topics to avoid during small talk.

F．You can start chatting by saying "It's a lovely day today, isn't it?"

G．Friends are important to us all, but how to make friends is a problem.