1 . Nature soothes(抚慰)our stressed-out souls. We know that nature is the best prescription, and new research suggests we can gain benefits while visiting parks.
"In general,we found park visitors reported an improvement in emotional well-being(幸福感)after the park visit.”the study's lead author and University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Hon K. Yuen said in a statement.“
For the study, 94 adults visited three city parks in Mountain Brook, Alabama, completing a questionnaire about their subjective well-being before and after their visit.
The study group was truly small. as the study's co-author and another UAB professor, Gavin Jenkins, acknowledges.
| A．Something was used to track their physical activity. |
| B．You usually visit a small green space in your neighborhood. |
| C．However, its findings pointed out the importance of city parks. |
| D．If you want to feel happier, you just need to exercise for 20 minutes in a park. |
| E．The best part is that you needn't visit a national park or go far out of your way. |
| F．This means people can benefit from visiting a nearby park, regardless of physical ability. |
| G．But we didn't find levels of physical activity are linked to improved emotional well-being. |
2 . For some people, walking or running outdoors is a great way to exercise. What may not be so great is seeing rubbish all over the ground. Well, some people are doing something about it.
A Swedish man named Erik Ahlström, started the movement in 2016. He moved to Stockholm from a small community (社区) in northern Sweden. Each day he would ride his bike to work. He became worried about the amount of rubbish and litter he saw each day on his way to work. So, he took matters into his own hands. He began picking up the rubbish.
Today, plogging is an official activity, which is becoming more and more popular. People of all ages are welcome to plog. Exercise while helping your community.
Along with cleaning up the environment, there may be another reason to choose plogging instead of just jogging. You may get a better workout. One fitness app, Lifesum, records one hour of plogging as burning 288 calories.
As can be seen, cities around the world now hold plogging events. The goal is to spread the idea that littering is not acceptable. People would think twice before dropping a garbage on the ground.
| A．Plogging is equal parts of exercise and community service. |
| B．And that is how plogging was born! |
| C．And plogging does good to your health. |
| D．Usual jogging burns about 235 calories. |
| E．They are plogging! |
| F．There are people all around the world doing this. |
| G．You get to know your neighbors. |
3 . Daily physical activity is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. For this reason, many architects and designers are working to create buildings that encourage people to make exercise a part of their ordinary routine. The movement to promote healthy activity through architecture is called active design. It began in 1998 as part of a university public health program, and it has since gained popularity in cities around the world. Active design uses a number of techniques to encourage the occupants of a building to be more active.
One of the most important strategies of active design is inspiring people to make walking part of their routine. A particularly successful tool for promoting walking is the skip-stop elevator. These elevators stop only on every second or third floor, leaving riders to take the stairs in order to reach their destination. Another strategy of active design is to make stairs more pleasant and inviting. Instead of creating dark stairwells that are located in isolated parts of buildings, active design uses well-lit and centrally placed stairs to encourage more foot traffic. Skip-stop elevators and appealing stair design are both effective tools of active design because they offer incentive and opportunity for exercise. In fact, researchers studying a building that employs both skip-stop elevators and more attractive stair design said that 70 percent of building occupants reported using the stairs every day.
Active design encourages physical activity using not only the interior features of a building, but the relationship between a building and its surroundings as well. A building that employs active design may integrate outdoor space in order to make the environment more engaging and promote physical activity. Some elements that architects use to incorporate the exterior with the interior are glass walls, interior gardens or park spaces, and courtyards with open ceilings, all of which de-emphasize the boundaries between inside and outside. These elements make the building more physically and mentally invigorating. Similarly, by increasing the number of entrances and exits to a building, architects can help keep a building’s users interested in their surroundings by providing a variety of routes for them to use. If people continue to be stimulated by new sights or experiences, they are less likely to choose the quickest and easiest path to their destination and may instead choose a more physically challenging route.
1. What does the underlined word “incentive” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．requirement | B．encouragement |
| C．technique | D．assistance |
| A．To demonstrate the differences between elevator and stairwell design. |
| B．To describe one advantage of using skip-stop elevators in buildings. |
| C．To make a point about why people don’t use the stairs often. |
| D．To argue that skip-stop elevators may lead to design failures. |
| A．Creating more routes for entering and exiting. |
| B．Building gardens inside the building. |
| C．Creating spaces with open ceilings. |
| D．Using see-through materials. |
| A．Para 2 describes an early model of a design discussed in para 3. |
| B．Para 3 argues about the effectiveness of the technique from para 2. |
| C．Para 3 introduces a different strategy than the one discussed in para 2. |
| D．Para 2 explains a technique, and para 3 gives examples of how it is used. |
4 . One of the marks of the Millennial Generation involves a passion for education. However, American students tend to rank unfavorably when compared with their peers in other nations globally. In his fascinating book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, the author Thomas L. Friedman describes how American students have fallen behind those of other nations in such subjects as math and engineering.
Meanwhile students in the U.S. are excellent at becoming couch potatoes: 65% of Americans are overweight. “We’re simply killing ourselves,” John Ratey says in his book Spark. “What’s even more disturbing is that inactivity is killing our brains too.” Low expectations produce expected results whether we are talking about the general population or students in local church ministries.
Let’s enter the Naperville school district near Chicago. In this single district, of the 19,000 sophomores (二年级学生), only 3% are overweight (compared to 30% nationally). But the students in this district reveal prowess (专长) in more ways than in fitness. In 2015 their 8th graders participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, an international study of students’ achievement. Ratey observes that in a time students in China, Japan and Singapore rank consistently above American students, while the Naperville class ranked sixth in math and first in science globally. What happened in this school district? There are several factors, as one reason hardly ever explains such a remarkable performance. But one issue stands out: each school day in Naperville begins with a “class” called Zero Hour in which students begin not with study but with exercise.
Ratey comments, “The essence of physical education in Naperville is teaching fitness instead of sports. The underlying philosophy is that if PE lessons can be used to instruct kids how to monitor and maintain their health and fitness, then the lessons they learn will serve them for life.”
Could it be that fitness is the most inexpensive means of increasing test scores? What has happened in Naperville did not begin with a brilliant educator with a Mensa-level IQ. It started with a PE teacher who read about the growing unhealthiness of American students. You can read Ratey’s book to get the details but in brief, the Naperville students no longer take gym classes with meaningless topics like learning the dimensions (面积) of a volleyball court. They start with Zero Hour running a mile with heart rate monitors. Here is what is discovered: learning is significantly improved when students begin with exercise. If you know students struggling with academics, or perhaps someone discouraged or even depressed (沮丧的) by academic setbacks, encourage them to try exercising. Help them get up, get active, and start their day by getting their body going.
More studies than can be counted have noted the positive ripple effect of exercise on dealing with depression, on eating better, on developing discipline, and on one’s general character. Now it seems that it also can directly affect academic performance. Students serious about becoming better learners should probably not start in the library at a desk with a pile of books but at home or the gym with some running shoes or a set of weights.
And who knows? They may discover they’re smarter than they thought.
1. What’s the main purpose of the first two paragraphs?| A．To show the author’s concern for American students’ academic performance. |
| B．To introduce to us two books which have something to do with education. |
| C．To inform us that the number of overweight children in America is huge. |
| D．To list the reasons for comparing students in America with those of other nations. |
| A．the students in Naperville keep fit in more ways than we expected |
| B．it’s worthwhile to pay a visit to the Naperville school district |
| C．the Naperville students’ fitness contributes greatly to their higher test scores |
| D．students in some Asian countries do better academically than American ones |
| A．knows how to monitor and maintain students’ health and fitness |
| B．sings high praise of Thomas L. Friedman’s book on American education |
| C．may mention the Naperville students’ gym classes |
| D．has been devoting himself to students’ overall development worldwide |
| A．exercise can build up one’s general character |
| B．exercise produces more than one positive effect |
| C．exercise is the best way to improve students’ test scores |
| D．exercise has a long-term effect on students’ academic performance |
| A．during Zero Hour students themselves spend time working out before class |
| B．forty-five minutes of exercise a day may be the magic number to lose weight |
| C．during Zero Hour heart rate monitors are used to prevent students’ laziness |
| D．fitness-based exercise makes our brain more ready to learn |
| A．To improve education, employ brilliant educators with high IQs. |
| B．Spend as much time as possible on sports. |
| C．Produce expected results with low expectations of students. |
| D．To help young people academically, get them moving. |
5 . Have you promised that your are going to get healthier? Maybe you want to lose weight, get stronger and have more energy. Maybe you are under the doctor’s orders to eat right and take exercise more.
Eat right. Healthy eating is harder than before. Now many supermarkets or restaurants are packed with unhealthy choices that cause weight gain and weaken energy. Over time, making poor food choices can cause illness.
Keep healthy.
| A．Sleep well. |
| B．Choose happiness. |
| C．Well, those all sound great. |
| D．But you don’t have to be concerned about it |
| E．That is not a group you want to be a part of. |
| F．So tell someone you love how you feel about them. |
| G．People who often take exercise are generally happier and healthier than people who don’t. |
The devices are designed to record your physical activity. They are usually worn around the wrist, where they measure a person’s heart rate. The research team looked at two groups of individuals. The first wore a fitness tracker and took part in health counseling (咨询) with experts to consider the best weight-loss plan. The researchers compared this group with people who only got health counseling.
The study found that those only speaking with the health experts lost nearly 6 kilograms, but those using a fitness tracker lost only 3.5 kilograms. John Jakicic, the lead researcher, questioned the use of electronic devices for weight control in place of “effective behavioral counseling for physical activity and diet. ”
The study involved 470 subjects aged between 18 and 35. Some of them were overweight, while others were considered obese (肥胖的). Over three fourths of the subjects were women. All the subjects were told to increase physical activity and start on a low-calorie diet. They had their weight measured once every six months. After six months, researchers divided the group into two parts: one continued with monthly counseling, while members of the other group were given a fitness tracker. Eighteen months later, both groups “showed significant improvements in fitness, physical activity, and diet,” with no major difference between groups. However, when it came to losing weight, the people who only spoke with experts lost nearly twice as much weight.
Jakicic said, “the study’s findings are important because effective long-term treatments are needed to address America’s obesity. ” More information is needed, he added, to learn how to best use these devices to change “physical activity and diet behaviors” in adults who want to lose weight.
1. All the subjects in the study were asked to ________.| A．start on a high-calorie diet | B．wear a fitness tracker |
| C．increase physical activities | D．record their heart rates |
| A．Wearing fitness trackers hardly helps people lose weight. |
| B．Physical activity and diet have no effect on weight loss. |
| C．Handling obesity requires effective long-term treatments. |
| D．There are great differences in fitness between both groups. |
| A．The study went on for about two years. |
| B．More than 120 men took part in the study. |
| C．Health counseling helps lose almost 6 kilograms. |
| D．Wearing a fitness tracker is useful for keeping slim. |
| A．describe how the researchers were conducting the study |
| B．indicate regular counseling for weight control is necessary |
| C．convince readers to wear fitness trackers for weight control |
| D．warn women are more likely to suffer from weight problems |
