The Importance of Global Education
Global education plays a crucial role in preparing individuals for the challenges of an interconnected world. It promotes understanding, empathy, and respect for different cultures and perspectives. Global education also fosters critical thinking skills and encourages individuals to become active global citizens. By learning about global issues, individuals can develop a sense of responsibility and contribute to positive change. It prepares them to navigate diverse environments and collaborate with people from different backgrounds.
Questions:
1. Why is global education important?
2. What are the benefits of global education?
3. How does global education contribute to positive change?
The Impact of Social Media
Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate and interact with others. It allows people to connect with friends and family, share updates, and discover new information. However, excessive use of social media can have negative effects on mental health. Studies have shown a correlation between heavy social media use and feelings of loneliness, depression, and low self-esteem. It is important to use social media in moderation and maintain a healthy balance between online and offline activities.
Questions:
1. What are the benefits of social media?
2. What are the potential negative effects of excessive social media use?
3. How can individuals maintain a healthy balance with social media?
The Importance of Time Management
Effective time management is essential for success in both personal and professional life. By managing time efficiently, individuals can prioritize tasks, meet deadlines, and reduce stress. Time management skills involve setting goals, creating schedules, and allocating time for specific activities. With good time management, individuals can achieve a better work-life balance and have more time for leisure activities. It also enables them to make the most of their time and increase productivity.
Questions:
1. Why is time management important?
2. What are some benefits of effective time management?
3. What skills are involved in time management?
The Benefits of Exercise
Regular exercise has a range of benefits for both physical and mental health. Firstly, exercise helps to strengthen the heart and improve cardiovascular health. It can also help to maintain a healthy weight and prevent obesity. Additionally, exercise boosts mood and reduces stress levels. People who exercise regularly often report feeling happier and more relaxed. Finally, exercise can improve cognitive function and memory. It has been shown to enhance concentration and increase mental clarity.
Questions:
1. What are the benefits of exercise for physical health?
2. How does exercise affect mood?
3. What are the cognitive benefits of exercise?
5 . Getting to the Top
Why do Olympic athletes push themselves to the limits? As one of the Olympic athletes, I miss birthday parties, ruin family holidays and skip nights out, but there is a very good reason for giving up so much. “We’re worried about you,” said my friend from across the table. He was worried that I had no longer become fun to train with and that I was in danger of being left with only a world championship medal and no one to share it with.
I could have become angry or defensive. Don’t they know how hard it is to be at the top in sport? Don’t they know what it takes to get there? However, deep down I knew elements of what he was saying were right. I was always tired and every workout had a mental intensity that seemed too much for most to handle. I was pushing the limits and extremes beyond what most thought were healthy.
These are the fears I face as a professional athlete on a day-to-day basis. Who am I doing this for? How much is too much? Why am I doing this? How can I be so selfish? What are the sacrifices for?
I think of countless birthday parties and nights out I have missed, ruining a family holiday in France because of the endless search for a swimming pool to train in, almost missing my brother’s wedding because I was too busy hiring a car in downtown Johannesburg and driving through the “no-go” areas in order to do a group ride with the local triathletes. The list is endless.
It boils down to this: I was born with an enormous amount of drive and determination. From a small girl, I would stay in at lunch time just to get ahead on class work rather than go out and play; I would get the bus on my own at ten years old and go to swim 100 lengths of the pool while other kids played pool games; I was the only girl in a rugby club of 250 boys. I have always lived my life to extremes. Call it unhealthy if you want, but that is the way I roll, no matter what it is I’m applying myself to.
Being a professional athlete is no different. If you want to be an Olympic champion, it’s all about that little extra thing you have done in your preparation that will set you apart from your competitors.
Can this be overdone? Absolutely. But if your dream is to be the best and reach the winner’s platform, you had better be totally committed to your sport. In the words of the British triathlete Alistair Brownlee, even if it means getting injured, “I’d prefer to have three or four outstanding years of winning stuff than having ten years of being average.”
Doing what we do as athletes sets us apart because we are willing to do that extra little bit that might take us to the top. It is certainly not a balanced way to live and it is certainly not normal but those words are generally not used for anyone who is striving for greatness.
1. What was the writer’s friend worried about?2. Please paraphrase the underlined sentence. (两句备选)
3. According to the passage, please decide which part of the following statement is false, then underline it and explain why.(两句备选)
(1)The writer missed many birthday parties, ruined family holidays and skipped nights out, because she had too many competitions to take part in.
(2)What makes an Olympic champion stand out from other competitors is the special talent she or he has.
4. (3题备选)
(1)Which athlete do you admire most? Why?
(2)What is your opinion about the writer’s attitude and commitment to the profession she has chosen?
(3)Choose one most important thing you need to get to the top. Give reasons for your choices
| intelligence determination patience mental toughness concentration self-discipline |
Green School in Uruguay
Francesco Fassina(Ecologist and Volunteer)
Michael Reynolds (Architect)
Alicia Alvarez (School Director)
Danila Mendez (Mother of a student)
Narrator : A sunny winter’s day is great news for these Uruguayan children. As pupils of South America’s first sustainable school, they study in a building heated only using solar panels. On top of the normal school programme, they learn about recycling, energy saving,and growing their own food
Francesco Fassina: The school is an autonomous building in the sense that it isn’t connected to any energy infrastructure for water or anything. It’s sustainable in the way it functions; totally autonomous and it works thanks to its connection with nature—the sun and the rain.
Narrator : The building was funded by a local NGO and a detergent company, and designed by US architect Michael Reynolds, a self-professed “garbage warrior” who's devoted his career to building self-sufficient structures out of recyclable material.
Michael Reynolds: People called me an idiot, uh, building with garbage, what a fool, you’re a disgrace to the architectural community, uh, you know. I was trying to contain sewage and treat it and do all of these things that architects didn’ t do
Narrator : The 39 students, so me just starting pre-school and others in their final year before university learn it’s possible to live in a building that produces no waste. NGO volunteers organise regular workshops on sustainability for pupils and teachers too.
Alicia Alvarez: Little by little, we`re becoming qualified. In fact were being trained by them. We`re being trained to learn how the school works. How to maintain it so that the systems don’t deteriorate.
Narrator : Some of the children have even started educating their parents
Danila Mendez: Every day, we walk here, and he finds glass in the sand or plastic or something and he picks it up. He says. “T`m keeping this to throw it away.” He doesn’t leave it there. He picks it up and he throws it away in the right place.
Narrator : For these little garbage warriors, saving the planet has become an integral part of their homework.
1. What are the reasons for being called a green school?2. How did the school come to being?
3. What did the people do to keep the school on?
I had just finished my dance class, and it was a disaster: I started on the wrong foot and couldn’t get the steps that other students seemed to do easily. I began to doubt my talent for ballet.
Just then, my big sister Julissa arrived. She took one look at me and asked, “What’s wrong Lakeisha?”
“Nothing,” I said quietly. I was too shy to be perfectly frank with my sister.
“Uh huh,” Julissa replied. “Looks like a bad ‘nothing’ to me, so tell me what happened.”
“Well,” I mumbled (咕哝), “maybe I shouldn’t be taking dance classes? It felt like I was the only one who couldn’t land her pirouettes (单脚尖旋转) today.”
“Listen,” she said, “not every day is a great one, and not everything you try is going to work out the way you want. The point is to keep trying. Remember that and you’ll be fine.”
“I tried my best, but…” I replied.
Looking at me seriously, Julissa said, “Maybe ballet is not your thing, but dance is. I see how beautifully you shake and move all the time. There are all kinds of ways to dance, so maybe you just need to find your own style. Why not stick to jazz dance? You are so good at it.”
I thought about her words and my performances carefully. Yes, why had I never thought of that? I wanted to be a ballet dancer, but it may not be a good choice for me. It seemed as if I suddenly saw the light
“You’re right,” I replied. “Thank you. I’m so lucky to have you to guide me!”
1. What did Lakeisha think of her dance class? (no more than 5 words)2. Why didn’t Lakeisha show her true feelings at first? (no more than 5 words)
3. How do you understand the underlined part in paragraph 8? (no more than 10 words)
4. What advice from Julissa made Lakeisha happy in the end? (no more than 10 words)
5. What is your understanding of finding one’s style? Please explain. (no more than 25 words)
Food takeaway rider who finds respite from his daily work stress in writing poetry publishes his second collection in as many years, Chen Nan reports.
In 2019, Wang Jibing, a food delivery rider living and working in Kunshan, East China’s Jiangsu province, had an unpleasant experience due to the wrong address left by a customer. Wang searched three buildings and climbed 18 floors before he finally managed to deliver the food to the customer, who rudely scolded Wang for arriving late.
Wang was sad and frustrated. As a husband and father of three children, who shoulders the majority of the financial responsibility in his family, he had to swallow the insult.
“If I argued with him, he would give me negative feedback and the company would have imposed a fine on me. I had no choice but to apologize repeatedly,” recalls Wang, 54, who makes about 6,000 yuan ($823) a month by delivering food.
On his way home that day, Wang wrote a poem, Man in a Hurry, expressing his feelings.
“Wind is born from air in a hurry. A knife is forged from the wind in hurry… Man in a hurry has no four seasons. He only has one stop after another. His world is about the name of a place,” he wrote.
Since then, Wang has been writing poems inspired by his daily life, including a poem New Temple, which was conceived after he delivered food to construction workers repairing an old temple, and Forgive, based on his observation of a young couple fighting.
1. respite from his daily work stress2. shoulders the majority of the financial responsibility
3. swallow the insult
4. imposed a fine on
5. What does writing poetry mean to Wang Jibing?
6. What do you think Wang Jibing is like?
We need to get back to the natural, built-in mechanisms that we have for self- preservation and health. Laughter is one of them.
Laughter Yoga is a way for people to use laughter without telling jokes and being able to get the laughter to help them feel better. The interesting thing is that it helps ease pain, it can ease depression, it’s a way to move and get into your inner child and it’s a lot of fun. And adults don’t remember necessarily how to have fun
The bottom line of our research is that laughter not only makes us feel good but it has a direct effect on our blood vessels. And our blood vessels control the likelihood of us developing a heart attack or a stroke. So if we keep the blood vessels healthy, then we’re going to be healthy.You can burn up to 40 calories for 5-10 minutes of laughter. But equally important is that the blood vessel opening that we see is the same as going jogging or even taking one of our cholesterol medications. You get the same effect in terms of opening up your blood vessels as you do with a good, deep, belly laugh. Laughing on a regular basis is not only good for our soul, but also great for our heart.
Laughter is a way of communication and that’s why it’s contagious. Because when I’m laughing, you’re looking at me and you’re like “wow, this is a positive energy” and you’re more likely to join me in the laughter.
But laughter’s not present at birth. It appears about 3-4 months of age and it’s one of the most important early means of communication between babies and mothers. A mother will tickle the baby and the baby will smile and laugh. And the mother will do more of that. If the baby does not like it, the baby will fuss or cry and the mother stops. It’s a kind of instinctive language that exists before we learn to talk. Laughter, like speech, evolved to change the behavior of other individuals. Does it have to have other purposes? It probably does, but we’re just now starting to tease out what those differences are. Did the benefits of laughter come from the act of laughing or is it the social context, spending time with friends, family, and lovers? All of these are very difficult scientific issues that haven’t been teased out. But laughter clearly feels good when we do it. Isn’t that enough?
1. What are the functions of Laughter Yoga?2. How does laughter help us medically?
3. What role does laughter play in a person’s growth?
10 . HEFEI, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) - A poetry festival kicked off Wednesday to commemorate Li Bai, a famous Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), in Ma’anshan City of east China’s Anhui Province.
More than 500 representatives attended the opening ceremony of the 33rd Li Bai poetry festival, including poetry experts, scholars and poetry lovers from across the country. A poem recital activity will also be held online this year between Chinese and Japanese poem enthusiasts to promote bilateral cultural exchange.
Li Bai is a household name in China as Shakespeare to the UK or Tagore to India. He lived between 701 and 762, also a golden age of Chinese poetry, and his poems are brimful of patriotism and romanticism. He spent his last days in Ma’anshan and wrote about 50 poems about the city throughout his life. It is said he was buried at the foot of Daqing Mountain in the city after he passed away.
A total of 871 poems have been submitted to the organizing committee to participate in this year’s festival. More than 100 statues of Li Bai and figures that appeared in his poems have been collected from all over China for exhibition at the festival.
Participants will pay homage to places in and around Ma’anshan City which Li Bai once visited. They will also pay a visit to Li Bai’s tomb on Thursday.
The first Li Bai poetry festival was held in 1989 in Ma’anshan, and it has become a shining cultural activity of the city ever since. Ma’anshan was named as Chinese City of Poetry by the Poetry Institute of China in 2014.
1. For what was a poetry festival held in Ma’anshan City?2. Who attended the 33rd Li Bai poetry festival?
3. Why is Li Bai recognized as Tagore in India?
4. Besides 871 poems submitted to the organizing committee, what else were acquired?
5. What influence has the Li Bai poetry festival on the City of Ma’anshan?
