1. REASONS OF LOVE( Level1: Beginner)
2. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
3. YODA - THE CAT WITH FOUR EARS
4. YOUNG CHILDREN PLAY SPORTS - ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES (Level2: Intermediate)
Most kids love to play sports. It’s important to them, but for the majority, it’s just one type of activity out of many that they do.
For a small number of kids, though, a sport becomes their whole life. They spend almost all their time and energy practicing. This has both advantages and disadvantages.
Sports are good for young children in many ways. Kids who enjoy sports are likely to have better health. They develop good habits of daily exercise that will keep them healthy as adults, too.
Today, many children and adults are overweight, but those who love sports stay in shape. Plus, by developing their physical abilities, they will learn how to work hard towards a goal.
Their achievements in sports will make them feel good about themselves. They’ll also make friends and learn teamwork. Sports, whether a little or a lot, can have positive effects.
We admire the talent and dedication of young athletes, but we also wonder if they’re losing something. Their focus is very narrow.
If they devote most of their time to sports, are they neglecting schoolwork? What about other interests? Children should try out many different activities. In addition, many young athletes are pressured by parents or coaches to succeed.
Kids whose drive comes from inside usually do okay, but others can be unhappy and have health and emotional problems. So sports, like anything else in excess, can have negative effects too.
5. BIRTHDAY TRADITIONS
The tradition of birthday parties started a long time ago. People thought that there was a special danger from evil spirits on birthdays so friends and family came together to bring good thoughts and wishes and even presents.
In the past, only kings had a birthday party, but as time went by, the public began to have their own birthday parties. There are some different traditions in different countries around the world.
In China, everyone celebrates their birthday on New Year’s Day. And on a child’s second birthday, family members put many things on the floor around the child. According to Chinese tradition, the first thing the child picks up will tell us what job the child will choose later in life.
In some countries, a 21st birthday cake often has a key on top or the cake itself is sometimes in a shape of a key. The key means that the young person is now old enough to leave and enter the family home at any time they want to.
For Japanese children, the third, fifth and seventh birthdays are particularly important. There’s usually a special party on these birthdays.
6. MAYBE YOU DON'T KNOW
1. The Yellow river is the second longest river in China. It carries millions of tons of yellow sand from the deserts of central China, which give the river a yellowish color. The Black Sea lies between six countries, including Russia, Turkey and Ukraine – but it certainly isn’t black!
The name probably comes from the black clouds which can cause storms in the area. And Greenland – the world’s largest island apart from Australia – is more white than green (85% of it is permanently covered in snow and ice). One idea is that the first people who arrived there saw it in the spring.
2. The Dead Sea is not really a sea, but a lake. Water comes into in from the River Jordan, but because the Dead Sea is lower than the land around it, it cannot flow out.
The hot desert sun evaporates the water as quickly as it flows in, leaving salt and other minerals behind. As a result, the Dead Sea is seven times saltier than the sea and people can easily float in it.
3. Can you name the country with the most extreme climate? Two of the hottest and coldest temperatures ever recorded were in the same country – Argentina.
A temperature of 49oC was recorded in the town of Rivadavia on 11th December 1905 and -33oC in Sarmiento (only 115 km away) in June 1907 – that’s a difference of 82oC!
7. BEAUTY: YESTERDAY AND NOW
For many people, supermodel Claudia Schiffer is the perfect beauty: tall and slim, blue-eyed, tanned with long, blond hair. People call her “the most beautiful woman in the world”.
But people have not always had the same ideas about beauty. Until the 1920s, suntanned people were considered as poor people. Women liked staying out of the sun to keep them as pale as possible.
Five hundred years ago, in the times of Queen Elizabeth I of England, fashionable women even painted their faces to make them whiter. And people in the eighteenth century would certainly not have thought much of Claudia Schiffer’s hair.
People in that time never went out without their wigs - which were so enormous and dirty. It was quite common to find a mouse living in them.
As for the perfect beauty painted by Rubens in the seventeenth century, if they wanted to be supermodels today they would have to spend months on a diet!
8. BENEFITS OF PLAYING SPORTS
Firstly, playing sports can give you a healthy life and a fit body. You will be more active and healthier by playing sports. To illustrate, you can have a lower chance of getting a serious illness such as a heart attack or high blood pressure.
In other words, it increases your resistance to illness. In leisure time, you can play sports with your friends or your relatives, this not only helps you but also motivates everyone around you to take part in sports and have good health.
Furthermore, there are some sports which you can play easily such as table tennis, tennis or football and after that, you feel completely relaxed or even free from your stress.
Moreover, you also need to allow and encourage children to play sports, especially some outside activities such as football, basketball or volleyball to decrease the time that your children spend sitting in front of computers or watching television.
These sports can help them have endurance, quickness and even teach them how to improve team spirit and work in groups. These sports also teach them how to communicate with their teammates, and show them how active and creative they are.
9. NIKE
Take a look around the room. How many people are wearing Nike? Millions of items of Nike sportswear are sold every year, and the company is now the world’s biggest sportswear manufacture.
The company whose name is pronounced Nye_kee has come a long way from its small origins in the US state of Oregon. The company was named after the Greek goddess of victory and made its first shoes back in the 1970s.
Nowadays Nike is known for its clever advertising campaigns, using the world’s best known sportsmen and women.
In the eighties and nineties, basketball legend Michael Jordan made a series of adverts for the company and in 1997, golf star Tiger Woods was paid $40 million to star in another series of adverts.
A sign of the company’s fame is that the word doesn’t appear on the company’s products. The famous Nike tick is recognized all over the world. It was created by a designer who received just $35 for the idea!
10. THE PANAMA CANAL
Among the great peaceful achievements of mankind that have contributed significantly to progress in the world, the construction of the Canal stands as an awe-inspiring achievement.
The unparalled engineering triumph was made possible by an international work force under the leadership of American visionaries, who made the centuries-old dream of uniting the two great oceans a reality.
In 1534, Charles I of Spain ordered the first survey of a proposed canal route through the Isthmus of Panama. More than three centuries passed before the first construction was started. The French labored 20 years, beginning in 1880, but disease and financial problems defeated them.
In 1903, Panama and the United States signed a treaty by which the United States undertook to construct an inter-oceanic shipping canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The following year, the United States purchased from the French Canal Company its rights and properties for $40 million and began construction.
The monumental project was completed in ten years at a cost of about $387 million. Since 1903 the United States has invested about $3 billion in the Canal enterprise, approximately two-thirds of which have been recovered.
The building of the Panama Canal involved three main problems -- engineering, sanitation, and organization. Its successful completion was due principally to the engineering and administrative skills of such men as John F. Stevens and Col. George W. Goethals, and Col. William C. Gorgas, who solved the health problems.
The engineering problems involved digging through the Continental Divide; constructing the largest earth dam ever built up to that time; and designing and building the most massive canal locks ever envisioned.