Babies are born yogis. Once we were all able to pull our toes up by our ears and laugh about it. Then we aged, got injured, and began carrying stress in our shoulders and back. In short, we lost our balance.
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(足底筋膜炎) 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(拯救) 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(静修), 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.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 |
According to the third paragraph, yoga can help people __________.
| A．grow taller | B．lose weight |
| C．become flexible in thinking | D．make more friends |
People feel tired after yoga because __________.
| 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 |
If this passage continues, what will the writer most probably write about in the next paragraph?
| 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. |
One cold, rainy night in 1979, staying on the deck of the nuclear attack submarine(核攻击潜艇) USS Birmingham entering Hampton Roads Harbor, a soldier who was called Jeff Harris was suddenly hit by a huge wave that took away his ship’s ball cap.
Months later, while walking along Chesapeake Boulevard beach in Hampton, Will Miller, a Vietnam veteran(退伍军人) and Navy(海军) commander, happened to find Harris’ cap which was half-buried in the sand then. Knowing how important a ship’s cap was to its owner, Miller saved the hat, hoping one day to find its owner. The cap was packed away for years but recently appeared again at Miller’s home in Florida.
“It suddenly fell out of a box onto my computer keyboard, right in front of me,” said Miller. “I guessed it was telling me, ‘It’s time to get me home.’”
An extensive Internet search led Miller to a USS Birmingham website and finally to Harris. The two sent e-mails back and forth, and one night Miller’s phone rang.
“This is Jeff Harris,” the voice on the phone said. “You have my hat!”
The two sailors talked for almost half an hour, telling sea stories to each other and thinking of the common relationship between seamen.”
“Most non-seagoing people wouldn’t understand how much a sailor likes his hat,” Miller said. “Your hat protects you from sun, wind, salt and cold, and when you lose it, especially one with your ship’s name on it, it’s a big thing. I’m delighted to get it back to Jeff.”What is the main idea of the story?
| A．A sailor looked for his hat for years. |
| B．Hats are important for sailors. |
| C．A sailor reunited with his hat years after losing it. |
| D．Friendship was based on a hat. |
Jeff Harris’s hat dropped off into the sea because of ______.
| A．a sudden wave | B．his carelessness |
| C．a strong wind | D．something wrong with his hat |
Will Miller kept the hat for years because ______.
| A．he wanted to leave it to his child |
| B．it was valuable as a gift |
| C．he wanted to return it to its owner |
| D．he wanted to sell it one day |
From the passage we can know Jeff Harris and Miller ______.
| A．had been friends before the story happened |
| B．didn’t know the importance of the hat |
| C．often told sea stories to each other |
| D．once worked at sea |
My husband and son took a New York-to-Milwaukee flight that was supposed to leave Friday at 11:29 am. The flight boarded after 4 pm and didn’t leave the gate until 4:40, and half an hour later the pilot announced it would be another hour until takeoff. At that point a Jewish family, worried about violating the Sabbath （安息日）, asked to get off. Going back to the gate cost the plane its place in line for takeoff, and the flight was eventually cancelled. Was the airline right to grant that request?
M. W, Norwalk, CONN.
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Situations like that can bring out the worst in people. But despite the increasing resentment（怨恨） of a plane full of people, the pilot tried to do the right thing. He went out of his way to satisfy one family’s urgent need. He should not have done so.
Passengers bought tickets in the belief that the airline’s primary goal was to get them to their destination as close to the schedule as possible. Once they got on the plane and the doors are locked, it’s not correct to announce that the rules have changed and that a personal (as opposed to medical) emergency —no matter how urgent — might take precedence（优先）.
That would be just as true if turning back to the gate had merely cost a few minutes rather than doomed the flight entirely, since on a plane, even a slight delay can spread outward, from the people in the cabin to those meeting them to the passengers waiting to board the plane for the next leg of its journey and so on. It would also be true if the personal emergency were not religious — if someone suddenly realized she’d made a professional mistake that might cost her millions, and she had to race back to the office to fix it.
If a religious practice does nothing to harm others, then airlines should make a reasonable effort to accommodate it. Though that family has every right to observe the Sabbath, it has no right to enlist an airplane full of captive bystanders to help them do so. By boarding a flight on a Friday afternoon, the family knowingly risked running into trouble. The risk was theirs alone to bear.M. W. wrote the letter to ask whether ______.
| A．Any religious passenger has the right to ask the pilot to take off |
| B．The airline has the right to cancel the flight without any reason |
| C．A flight should meet any passenger’s need despite others’ benefit |
| D．A plane which has left the gate should give up taking off |
What do we know from the reply letter?
| A．The pilot did the right thing in spite of the fierce resentment. |
| B．The plane should turn back if anyone aboard is seriously ill. |
| C．Anybody who has boarded has no chance to get off the plane. |
| D．Any flight shouldn’t change its schedule no matter what has happened. |
What does the underlined part in Paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Turning back to the gate usually takes a plane quite a long time. |
| B．Nobody should take precedence to require the plane to turn back to the gate. |
| C．Even if it had taken a few minutes it was not right to turn back to the gate. |
| D．It was OK if turning back to the gate hadn’t caused the flight to be cancelled. |
The author of the reply letter thinks that _________.
| A．It’s right for the plane to turn back to the gate to save a passenger’s treasure |
| B．The Jewish family should give up observing the Sabbath after boarding |
| C．The biggest problem of turning back is to bring trouble to the pilot |
| D．The Jewish family had better avoid boarding on Friday afternoon |
For generations here in the deepest South, there had been a great taboo（禁忌）: publicly crossing the color line for love. Less than 45 years ago, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal, and it has been forbidden for much of the time since.
So when a great job about an hour’s drive north of the Gulf Coast attracted him, Jeffrey Norwood, a black college basketball coach, had reservations. He was in a serious relationship with a woman who was white and Asian.
“You’re thinking about a life in South Mississippi?” his father said in a skeptical voice, recalling days when a black man could face mortal（致命的） danger just being seen with a woman of another race, regardless of intentions. "Are you sure?"
But on visits to Hattiesburg, the younger Mr. Norwood said he liked what he saw: growing diversity. So he moved, married, and, with his wife, had a baby girl, who was counted on the last census（人口普查） as black, white and Asian. Taylor Rae Norwood, three, is one of thousands of mixed-race children who have made this state home to one of the nation's most rapidly expanding multiracial populations, up 70 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
In the first comprehensive accounting of multiracial Americans since statistics were first collected about them in 2000, reporting from the 2010 census, made public in recent days, shows that the nation’s mixed-race population is growing far more quickly than many researchers had estimated, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest. That conclusion is based on the bureau’s analysis of 42 states; the data from the remaining eight states will be released soon.
In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it grew by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70percent.
Census officials estimated the national multiracial growth rate was about 35 percent since2000 according to the known result, when seven million people ----- 2.4 percent of the population ------ chose more than one race.If a black man married a white woman 50 years ago, the worst result was that _____.
| A．he was sentenced to death | B．he was considered to be immoral |
| C．he was criticized by the public | D．he was treated as a lawbreaker |
The underlined word “serious” in Paragraph 2 can be replaced by “____”.
| A．stable | B．bad | C．mixed | D．dangerous |
What can we infer from Paragraph 4?
| A．Jeffrey Norwood was born in Hattiesburg and grew up there. |
| B．Taylor Rae Norwood’s mother is a white-Asian. |
| C．70 percent of the people in Mississippi are multiracial. |
| D．Mississippi has the largest multiracial population in the US. |
Which of the following states had the fastest growth rate of mixed-race population?
| A．Georgia. | B．Tennessee. | C．North Carolina. | D．South Dakota. |
First Lady Michelle Obama urged students to visit China at the "100,000 Strong" China Study Abroad forum at Howard University in 2011.
President Barack Obama announced the "100,000 Strong" Initiative （倡议） during his 2009 visit to China. The program aims to increase and diversify the number of American students studying in China by making studying abroad more affordable.
During the event at Howard, Mrs. Obama spoke about the importance of studying abroad, something she never did while in college. "Studying in countries like China is about so much more than just improving your own prospects（前景） in the global market. The fact is that with every friendship you make and every bond of trust you establish you are shaping an image of America projected to the rest of the world," she said.
David Marzban from Pepperdine University recalled a time when he formed a cross-cultural bond with a complete stranger at a restaurant near Fudan University in Shanghai. He noticed a young chef signaling him to come over. "He presses the play button on his media player and starts singing 'California Dreaming' and wants me to sing along with him," Marzban said. "At this time I knew a great friendship had started during my first two weeks in China."
Nicole Baden, a senior communications major at Howard University, recalled how her time in China really helped her master the language. "You have to experience the culture while learning the language to really master it and to understand why things are how they are compared to your own culture," Baden said.
Mrs. Obama encouraged students to set aside concept that studying abroad is for rich kids only or for those attending certain schools. In addition, the first lady announced that the Chinese government is giving 10,000 "Bridge Scholarships" to cover costs for American students and teachers studying in China.
Students from several schools attended the forum. 12-year-old Sarah Davis, who studied in China last summer, said she was very excited to hear Michelle Obama talk about the country. “I love Chinese. Out of all the languages I’ve learned, Chinese is the most difficult and interesting,” she said.The examples mentioned in the passage mainly indicate that _____.
| A．the US students’ life in China is helpful and worthwhile |
| B．all students of the US are living a comfortable life in China |
| C．Chinese young people are friendly to foreigners |
| D．it isn’t realistic for some US young people to study in China |
What can we infer from the passage?
| A．Baden came to China to study the differences between English and Chinese. |
| B．Poor children from America have no opportunity to study in China. |
| C．David Marzban made a Chinese friend in an unexpected way in China. |
| D．Michelle Obama called on US students to study in China at a government meeting. |
What is the best title for the passage?
| A．The US has an ambitious program for Americans studying in China. |
| B．Michelle Obama encourages American students to study in China. |
| C．More American students plan to study in China. |
| D．China is attracting more and more international students. |
It’s a natural phenomenon. The minute you think you want to buy something new, you go online to read reviews about it. Not only is this done with shopping, it’s also done for movies to see , restaurants to go to and almost everything that is worth having an opinion on. The concept of writing down a review for all to see is something that has caused the birth of reviews sites. These are sites where people post reviews on other people, services, businesses, products and more.
In some cases you have professionals do the review and in some other cases you will have the average person write it up. Review sites have a number of ways in which they can gain revenue for themselves in the form of advertising. In some cases, a business can pay his way through to a better listing spot. This does not mean that a positive review will be promoted where it is not warranted (担保).
Review sites are largely a public forum and it is not necessary for people to reveal their identity. Since people are anonymous (匿名的) and sign up access is open to all, there are chances that reviews will be planted or will be negatively written simply to discredit a particular product or service.
There is a lot of criticism towards these websites since they do nothing to control the kind of entries made or the source of these entries. On the other hand, there are professional review sites. These people are accountable for each of their reviews. Any doubts you have will be addressed personally by the one writing the review. Such sites work on much better principles allowing for a fair opinion.
Considering they have a better reputation, they are aware of some the latest products that are released worldwide. This gives you a better chance of finding reviews of the latest product. While a review site will help you narrow down your choice, it by no means should influence your final decision. That is based entirely on the way you see fit.Nowadays, before buying something, people usually ________.
| A．ask the opinion of others | B．surf famous review sites. |
| C．ignore topics of review sites. | D．read reviews on the Internet. |
The underlined word “revenue” in Paragraph 2 probably means”______”.
| A．the announcement posted by sites |
| B．the income earned from sales or services |
| C．the freedom of writing reviews |
| D．the program made by advertisement companies |
What do we know about the professional reviews sites?
| A．The reviews on the sites are written mainly by professors. |
| B．Those who write the reviews on the sites are serious sometimes. |
| C．The reviewer addresses your doubt personally for you. |
| D．The reviewers on the sites are ready to write to you if you like. |
This passage was written mainly to tell us________.
| A．to make good use of review sites |
| B．to consult something with reviewers |
| C．not to make a decision before reading reviews |
| D．not to believe some review sites |