Hi, Liam!
I'm really happy to be your pen friend. I'm 14 years old and I live in Calgary, Canada. I have two little brothers, Brian and Sam. I'm the only girl.
I'm active in sports and I'm always trying something interesting. I like playing hockey (曲棍球) in winter. It's fun! But summer is my favorite time of the year. I love skateboarding and rock climbing (滑滑板和攀岩) in summer.
Many girls think skateboarding is difficult, but it is easy and fun for me. I often skateboard in the park after school. I'm good at jumping with the skateboard!
Rock climbing is also really fun. I usually climb with my dad on the weekend. We can't do it on real mountains often because we live in the city. We often do indoor rock climbing.
So that's me-Little Miss Active! My friends like to call me that. I like the name. What sports do you like? Please write back soon.
Bye for now
Anne
1. How many children are there in Anne's family?2. What does Anne love doing in winter?
3. What does Anne think of skateboarding?
4. Does Anne often go rock climbing on real mountains?
5. What do Anne's friends like to call her?
Yoga（瑜伽） is an ancient practice that helps create a sense of union in body, mind, and spirit. It brings us balance. I was seriously out of balance when I started practicing yoga in 1999. I had plantar fascitis in both feet, and my doctor had warned me against all the things I loved to do: walking, hiking, and playing tennis. I was desperate for exercise. Yoga became my salvation and even enhanced my other fitness activities. I practice yoga at least twice a week, but I consider yoga to be part of my daily life because after a while you no longer just practice yoga—you love it.
Yoga becomes part of your physical life. Your body grows stronger, more toned, and more flexible as you move from one pose to the other. I spent a week in Mexico at a yoga retreat, and it was the first vacation on which I lost weight. “Rather than building muscle, yoga builds muscle tone,” says Shakta Kaur Khalsa, author of the K.I.S.S. Guide to Yoga. “Because yoga helps maintain a balanced metabolism (新陈代谢), it also helps to regulate weight. Additionally, yoga stretches muscles lengthwise, causing fat to be removed around the cells.” I do yoga poses throughout the day. After hours at my computer, I stretch my stiff shoulders and arms. When I need a boost of energy, I do energizing poses. When I am feeling exhausted at the end of the day, I do restorative poses.
Yoga becomes part of your mental life. Yoga teaches you to focus on breathing while you hold the poses. This attention to breath is calming; it dissolves stress and anxiety. I use yogic breathing on the tennis courts, in the dentist’s chair, and in traffic jams. You should always leave a yoga practice feeling energized, not tired. If you feel tired after yoga, it means you spent the time “fighting” yourself, trying to force yourself into poses. In yoga, you “surrender” to the pose by letting go of the tension.
Yoga becomes part of your spiritual life. Yoga is practiced by people from all religions; it is not restricted to any religious group. Yoga teaches “right” living in how we deal with ourselves and others. As I work on a difficult pose, I learn patience, forgiveness, and the value of gentleness. Yoga advocates proper eating, but you don’t have to be a vegetarian to practice yoga.
1. What would be the best title for this passage?
| A．What’s Yoga? | B．How I Do Yoga Poses |
| C．The Benefits of Yoga | D．The Varieties of Yoga |
| A．grow taller | B．lose weight |
| C．become flexible in thinking | D．make more friends |
| A．they consume energy in practicing yoga |
| B．they respond well to yoga poses |
| C．they spend too much time on yoga |
| D．they force themselves into yoga poses |
| A．Yoga as a means to keep fit. | B．Different yoga poses. |
| C．Popularity of yoga all over the world. | D．Encouraging people to do yoga. |
3 . For some people, walking or running outdoors is a great way to work out. What may not be so pleasant is seeing trash all over the ground. Well, some people are doing something about it. They are logging!
“Plogging” began in Sweden. The name combines the Swedish word “plocka” which means to pick up, and the word “Jogging”, which means to run slowly. A Swedish man named Erik, started the movement in 2016. On the World Environment Day website, Erik says that he moved to Stockholm from a small community in northern Sweden. Each day he would ride his bike to work.
Concerned about the amount of trash and litter he saw each day on his way to work, he took matters into his own hands.
Flogging, by that term, may have officially begun in Sweden. But many people who exercise outdoors have been doing this for years. Take Jeff Horowitz, for example. He is a personal trainer in Washington D.C. He often picks up trash while running outside. He even has turned it into a game. He will try to pick up the trash without stopping. “I didn’t know it was a thing really. This is just my personal ethics (道德标准) where I go for a run and if I happen to see a piece of garbage lying around and it’s within reach — it is a kind of a little test for me to see if I can grab it and throw it in a near trash can without stopping. And that way, I think, it gives me a little exercise and a little focus for my run. And it helps clean up the neighborhood,” he announced.
Today, logging is an official activity, one that is becoming increasingly popular. Cities around the world now hold plogging events. “I would just hope people would think twice before dropping a garbage on the ground. We have containers…seems on every block. So, it’s easy to put your garbage in the trash cans. I just think people should think about it a little bit more. I do hope one day there will not be a need for logging.” said an interviewee.
1. Which of the following can replace the underlined phrase “took matters into his own hands”?| A．began to pick up the trash. | B．appealed to people to go green |
| C．called on people to join him. | D．had the collected trash recycled |
| A．deliberate | B．automatic | C．arbitrary | D．temporary |
| A．Jogging is truly beneficial. | B．Trash cans should be within reach. |
| C．Communities should be kept clean. | D．Littering is not acceptable. |
| A．New Exercise Trend Also Helps Environment |
| B．New Exercise Enjoys unbelievable popularity |
| C．Plogging — a Fashionable Way to clear waste |
| D．Plogging — an Exercise Originating in Sweden |
4 . Most young people enjoy some form of physical activity. It may be walking, cycling or swimming, or in winter, skating or skiing. It may be a game of some kind of football, hockey, golf, or tennis. It may be mountaineering.
Those who have an interest in climbing high and difficult mountains are often looked upon with astonishment. Why are men and women willing to suffer cold and hardship, and to take risk on high mountains? This astonishment is caused probably by the difference between mountaineering and other forms of activity to which men give their leisure.
Mountaineering is a sport and not a game. There are no man-made rules, as there are for such games as golf and football. There are, of course, rules of a different thing that it would be dangerous to ignore, but it is this freedom from man-made rules that makes mountaineering attractive to many people. Those who climb mountains are free to use their own methods.
If we compare mountaineering and some other sports, we might think that one big difference is that mountaineering is not a “team game”. We should be mistaken in this. There are, it is true, no “matches” between “teams” of climbers, but when climbers are on a rock face linked by a rope on which their lives may depend, there is obviously teamwork.
The mountain climber knows that he may have to fight forces that are stronger and more powerful than men. He has to fight the forces of nature. His sport requires high mental and physical qualities.
A mountain climber continues to improve in skill year after year. A skier is probably past his best by the age of thirty, and most international tennis champions are in their early twenties. But it is not unusual for a man of fifty or sixty to climb the highest mountains in the Alps. They may take more time than younger men, but they probably climb with more skill and less waste of efforts, and they certainly experience equal enjoyment.
1. What’s the meaning of “leisure” in Paragraph 2?| A．enjoyment | B．rest |
| C．entertainment | D．spare time |
| A．it is an Olympic event | B．mountaineers depend on each other while climbing |
| C．teams compete against each other | D．there are five climbers on each team |
| A．Because they can learn to fight the forces of nature while climbing. |
| B．Because they can improve their skill when they are on a rock face. |
| C．Because they don’t have to be restricted (限制) by rules while climbing. |
| D．Because they can enjoy a lot of fun while climbing. |
| A．people show interest in mountaineering because it is a team game |
| B．physical quality is more important than mental one for climbers |
| C．a mountain climber would pass his best by the age of thirty |
| D．it is possible for an old man of sixty to climb the Alps. |
| A．Mountaineering |
| B．Mountaineering Is More Attractive than Other Sports |
| C．Mountaineering Is Different from Golf and Football. |
| D．Mountain Climber |
5 . Doing “clean” exercise
When you go for a run outside, chances are that you'll find litter all around you. Do you just go past it, or do you stop and pick it up? If you choose the latter, you're part of the latest fitness trend that's sweeping the West: plogging.
Running - especially marathons - is often associated with good causes. And plogging, which combines environmentalism with fitness, has become the new poster boy for the environmentally-friendly runner. All a plogger needs is a trash bag, and ideally a pair of gloves to protect their hands.
While collecting garbage, ploggers learn to classify and dispose (处理) it correctly too. Laura Lindberg, a plogger who lives in New Jersey, US, always keeps a note of what she's collected in her mind. This way, she knows what can stay in her trash bag and what can go in a nearby recycling bin.
According to the Swedish fitness app--Lifesum, a 30-minute plogging session(一次) burns around 288 calories, compared to 235 calories burned from just jogging.
| A．The process of collecting garbage is simple |
| B．So the next time you go out jogging, why not carry a trash bag and collect some liter along the way? |
| C．The amount of garbage, otherwise, strewn (散布) across the sidewalks and along the pavement was kind of shocking. |
| D．The word “plogging” combines the phrase “pick up” with the word “jogging”. |
| E．It may be difficult to measure the sense of self-satisfaction, but the health benefits of plogging are easy to see. |
| F．Plogging becomes a clean and fashionable Running. |
| G．American therapist (治疗专家) Charles F. Porter also analyzed the additional actions a jogger needs to take for garbage collection |
6 . Lately, everywhere you look, people are running around with fitness trackers(健步跟踪器)on their wrists. Along with a smartphone and an accompanying app, these trackers can report how many calories you've burned and the distance you've traveled. Still curious about yourself? You can also learn the number of stairs you've climbed and steps you`ve taken, metrics(度量)it had never occurred to me to wonder about.
Not one to resist peer pressure(同辈压力), however, I paid S100 for a Fitbit Flex. I chose that brand on the basis of research: asking my friend Sari which tracker she was using.
The Fitbit website offered instructions on setting up my new tracker. I entered my height and gender(性别)and certain information I considered none of its business: birth date and weight. Then I established goals. The American Heart Association recommends we all walk 10,000 steps a day-about five miles, and so does Fitbit. I decided 6,000 steps was a good place for me to start.
I changed my tune when, on day one, I hit 5,000 steps and tiny LED lights flashed on my wristband. Confident enough now, I went back to my phone and upped my goal to 8,000 steps. OK. So I got a little obsessed(着迷). On day live at a department store, I decided to check my progress. My target umber was just 275 steps away! I walked around the dress department watching my smartphone register each step I took. I hate to tell you how much pleasure this gave me.
Now I always wear my tracker, not because I've grown to love fitness but because 1 like being fashionable and self-absorbed(自恋的). Last night I was leaving a restaurant when Fitbit emailed to congratulate me on walking more than 10,000 steps. Who wouldn't love a tool that turns your every footstep into an accomplishment(成就)?
1. Why do people wear fitness trackers while running?| A．To measure the amount of exercise. |
| B．To be informed of the right direction |
| C．To show off their latest equipment |
| D．To receive emails of congratulations. |
| A．it is the suggestion from Fitbit Flex |
| B．it is the best choice for beginners |
| C．the author wasn't confident at first |
| D．the friend Sadri asked the author to do so |
| A．Joyful and encouraging. | B．Painful and expensive. |
| C．Meaningless and uncomfortable. | D．Exciting and astonishing. |
