1 . Here is a list of writing competitions.
Wild Nature Poetry Award
Here we have a new contest from Indigo Dreams Publishing. It is for poems of up to 48 lines on the subject of cruel sports, or wildlife in general, or the natural world, or the environment.
Closing: 30th Sept. , 2022
Prizes: £200, £100, £75
Entry Fee: £5. 50% of entry fees will be donated to the League Against Cruel Sports.
W&A Yearbook Short Story Competition
This annual contest from the writers’ handbook Writers’ &Artists’ Yearbook is for stories of up to 2, 000 words aimed at young adults. There is no theme. Take notice that before emailing your entry, you have to register with the website. Your entry will not be valid otherwise.
Closing: 11th Feb. , 2022
Prizes: A place on one of Arvon’s residential writing courses, plus your story published on the website.
Entry Fee: None. Free to enter.
Green Stories Novel Prize
The competition organized by the University of Southampton is held annually. It is about the idea of a more sustainable society. Submit three chapters of your finished novel or work in progress. One of the chapters must be the first. The three together should run to between 4, 000 and 10, 000 words.
Closing: 30th Dec. , 2022
Prizes: £1, 000, £500
Entry Fee:£2
Melita Hume Poetry Prize
This year’s Melita Hume Poetry Prize from Eyewear Publishing is, as usual, for first full-length collections by poets aged 35 or under, residents in the UK or Ireland. To enter, you should submit between 48 and 100 pages.
Closing:3rd Jan. , 2022
Prizes:Publication with a £1, 200 advance.
Entry Fee:£15.
1. What is required to enter for W&A Yearbook Short Story Competition?| A．Registration in advance |
| B．Previous experience |
| C．A fixed theme |
| D．Entry fee |
| A．It is a yearly activity. |
| B．It is about sustainability. |
| C．It has a word limit. |
| D．It has a closing date. |
| A．Wild Nature Poetry Award |
| B．W&A Yearbook Short Story Competition |
| C．Green Stories Novel Prize |
| D．Melita Hume Poetry Prize |
2 . Some people prefer to have a bite to eat before hitting the gym, known as a fed workout. Others would like to wait until after exercising to refuel their bodies, called a fasted workout.
If you want energy and strength for an ideal workout, you need fuel. A fed workout will provide your body with power. Eating before exercise may help you sustain longer sessions and lift heavier weights.
Many fitness enthusiasts are not on board with this idea. They report feeling sick and inactive while trying to exercise after eating. With a fasted workout, you may not get the usual indigestion. Experts for fasted workouts further claim that eating afterwards makes your body use its fat reserves for energy, meaning you will burn more fat.
Deciding when to eat for an ideal workout is a personal choice. Both fasted workouts and fed activities have their benefits and shortcomings.
| A．However, a fasted workout might not work for you. |
| B．How your body will respond is based on your workout intensity. |
| C．These benefits can result in burning more fat and shaping a slimmer body. |
| D．To eat or not to eat, that is the question on many fitness enthusiasts’ minds. |
| E．Think thoroughly and discuss with your fitness instructor before taking a choice. |
| F．Knowing what to eat for an ideal workout is just as important as knowing when to eat. |
| G．A person doing a 30-minute session a day may not have a problem with fasted workouts. |
3 . When pro-golfer Umi Jai first started competing against men, she felt frightened. They didn't want to play with her, she says and they didn’t take her seriously. But then in her first match she won.
After that she had all the confidence she needed to keep playing and beating the boys. Now as the only professional female golfer in Senegal, she competes almost exclusively against men.
“Now I'm used to playing with men. I train in the morning, noon and night. I'm in the gym three or four times per week. So that also gives me more confidence.” She said. Jai turned professional seven years ago.
She’s placed in dozens of competitions around the world including in Thailand, Kenya and South Africa. Her accomplishments are particularly noteworthy considering Senegal is a conservative Muslim nation, where women are discouraged from participating in sports especially at the professional level. “When you're Muslim, we prefer to keep girls at home to find them a husband and make them a housewife.” She told journalist.
In 2020 the Senegalese Golf Federation agreed to help Jai establish a golf academy, in preparation for the 2026 summer youth Olympics in Dakar. It would be the first Olympic games to ever be held on African soil. The project was postponed due to Covid, but it's expected to restart this year.
Jai will be tasked with training Senegal’s first ever national team, with a specific focus on preparing the next generation of female golfers including her daughter.
“Girls will be part of it I mean on an equal basis like boys, and that would be something that I think we are prepared and committed to do. And Jai also has that vision and committed to promote a girl to give them opportunity, as a girl I mean, to help them get to the level that they can be.” Said the executive director of Senegalese Golf Federation.
Jai says she hopes to find a sponsor so she can continue to compete internationally, and bring the next generation of Senegalese female golfers into the fold.
1. What can we know from the first two paragraphs?| A．Umi Jai enjoyed competing against men initially. |
| B．Umi Jai failed in her first match when competing against men. |
| C．The men who played with Umi Jai had no intention to play with her. |
| D．The men in Senegal competed mostly against women. |
| A．Ordinary. | B．Remarkable. | C．Awful. | D．Unsurprising. |
| A．To protect the golfer players in Senegal from Covid. |
| B．To prepare for 2026 summer youth Olympics in Dakar. |
| C．To find a sponsor to help her continue to compete internationally. |
| D．To be specifically bent on training the next generation of golfers. |
| A．The First Woman Golfer in the World. |
| B．A Muslim Golfer. |
| C．A Woman Who Brought Female Golfers Into the Fold. |
| D．The Senegalese Woman Golfer Who Competes Against Men. |
4 . Tobogganing, or sledding (雪橇), likely comes before the colonization of North America. Records show that Canada’s First Peoples used small sleds to transport their belongings and food between camps, Raymond Flower writes in The History of Skiing and Other Winter Sports. But modern-day sled races can trace their origins back to the Swiss Alps in the late 1800s when British tourists decided to race in wooden luges (a sled used by one person) that locals had used to travel through snow. The origin is debatable in snowy northern New York, however, where there $ evidence that Albany held bobsled (a sled used by two or more people) races as early as 1885.
Wherever they began, sled races quickly became popular. The famous Cresta Run, named after the Swiss town near the base of its course, was built in 1885 using snowbanks. The first organized competition was in 1898, hosted by the first bobsled club in nearby St.Moritz (a city in Switzerland). It was then that sledding began to separate from the luge to include two new sports: bob sledding, and skeleton sledding (俯式雪橇).
Cresta Run is considered the birthplace of the skeleton, a particularly daring form of sledding. Unlike the luge, where competitors ride feet-first on a sled with metal runners, the skeleton sledding is a steel sled with a slim appearance. Riders lie down on the sled headfirst, then drop suddenly down an ice track. Bobsledding, meanwhile, involves teams of two to four in which the person in front controls directions and the player in back brakes when needed. It earned its name after competitors started swinging back and forth to speed up the sled.
Bobsledding initially overtook skeleton sledding in popularity, becoming one of a handful of sports played at the first Winter Games in 1924. The skeleton sledding was limited to the Cresta Run for decades because other bob runs around the world were not built for the steel skeleton sled. But in the 1970s, adjustments were made to both the skeleton and bob runs in order to include the event at future winter games.
1. What can we infer about Raymond Flower?| A．He is a writer. |
| B．He is good at sledding. |
| C．He invented the sledding race. |
| D．He set the first record of sledding. |
| A．Skeleton sledding runs on metal runners. |
| B．Skeleton sledding doesn’t have back brakes. |
| C．Riders on Skeleton sledding sled with their feet. |
| D．Skeleton sledding needs players to lie down on it headfirst. |
| A．Its special shape. |
| B．Its speed. |
| C．Its steel runners. |
| D．Its unsuitable adjustments. |
| A．Why is sledding so popular? |
| B．How did sledding develop in Switzerland? |
| C．What are sledding adventures about? |
| D．How did people kill time in North America? |
5 . Once Popular Sports in Ancient Capital Xi'an
The ancient capital Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi province is holding the National Games. As the capital of 13 dynasties throughout Chinese history, the ancient city has never been far from sports. Starting from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, the city has held many sports events.
Cuju: Origin of modern soccer
Cuju was an ancient Chinese competitive game involving kicking a ball through an opening into a net. As the ancestor of soccer, it first appeared in the renowned ancient Chinese historical work Zhan Guo Ce（“Strategies of the Warring States”）, which describedCuju as a form of entertainment among the general public. Later, cuju was commonly played in the army for military training purposes, during the Han Dynasty.
Jiaodi: Chinese-style wrestling
Sumo, known as Japan's “national sport”, actually started in ancient China. Sumo was called jiaodi or jiaoli in ancient times. Ancient jiaodi,a Chinese-style wrestling, was performed by athletes wearing ox horns and wrestling with each other imitating wild oxen. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, jiaodi was highly favored by emperors. In the Tang Dynasty, jiaodi was part of military training and a kind of entrainment and athletic sports.
Jiju: Ancient polo
Jiju is a sport which uses a stick to hit balls while riding on a horse, pretty similar to modern polo. It was popular in the royal court and among common people in the Tang Dynasty. There were many fields for playing polo in the court and it was also a major military training program in the army. In the Tang Dynasty capital, there were formal polo courts, such as the stadium pavilion in Chang' an palace.
Archery
During ancient times, the origin of archery was closely related with hunting and defense. Ancient archery was not only an athletic event,a military training program, and an entertainment activity, but also part of education. As early as in Zhou Dynasty, the archery was listed as one of the six practical disciplines, also called the Six Arts, becoming an important and competitive form.
1. Which was popular in the army during the Han Dynasty?| A．Cuju. | B．Jiaodi. |
| C．Jiju. | D．Archery. |
| A．Only by riding a horse. |
| B．By hitting balls wearing ox horns. |
| C．By kicking a ball through an opening into a net. |
| D．By hitting balls while riding on a horse with a stick. |
| A．They were only for entertainment. |
| B．They all disappeared late gradually. |
| C．They were military training programs. |
| D．They all originated from Han Dynasty. |
6 . Most people would tremble at the idea of getting caught up in a 73.5-foot wave. But for Brazilian pro-surfer Maya, it presented the perfect opportunity to break her 2018 world record for the largest wave surfed by a female. The athlete skillfully maneuvered (操控) the massive wave at the World Surf League (WSL) Nazare Tow Surfing Challenge in Praia do Norte, Portugal, where she established her first world record by riding a 68-foot wave.
“When I let go of the rope, I had a feeling it could be the one but wasn’t sure. The speed was very high, but the noise that the wave made when it broke made me realize that this was probably the biggest wave I’d ever ridden.
Her record, earning her WSL’s 2020 women’s Biggest Wave Award, was two feet higher than Dupont’s wave, who had ridden the largest wave. It was also 3.5 feet higher than the 70-foot wave ridden by the 2020 men’s Biggest Wave Award winner Kai Lenny!
“Our sport is very male-dominated, with the performances on the male side being often much stronger than ours as females,” she said. “This year, a woman did surf the biggest, tallest wave of the year. It opens the idea that in other categories and other areas of surfing, this could be accomplished, too.”
Though Maya, who has been surfing competitively since she was 15, seemed to effortlessly move over the monster surf, it has not all been smooth sailing. Her first attempt at pursuing the world’s biggest wave in Nazare, Portugal, in 2013 could have ended her career. The surfer suffered a disastrous wipeout that broke her ankle and almost caused her to drown. However, it did not reduce her determination to create her record as one of the world’s greatest surfers!
1. What was Maya’s result in WSL Nazare Tow Surfing Challenge in 2018?| A．71.5 feet. | B．68 feet. |
| C．70 feet. | D．73.5 feet. |
| A．The noise of the wave. | B．The speed of the wave. |
| C．The size of the wave. | D．The height of the wave. |
| A．It reflected people’s idea about surfing. |
| B．It represented the highest level of surfers. |
| C．It proved the ability of female surfers. |
| D．It indicated the domination of males. |
| A．Her strong will. | B．Her talent. |
| C．Her attempt. | D．Her frustration. |
