Some people may think I'm crazy when I say “work is rest”. But that's the way it is — we need to rest. Without rest, we will die. At a minimum, we won't have the energy to work.

    Nobody forces us to be so stupid about this. We just don't know how to rest properly. We rest in ways that are not restful, even stressful. Some of our ways of rest interfere with our working energy. Instead of sleep, we go to the movies and clubs, drink or have a smoke with friends. This is because we misunderstand the meaning of “rest”.

    We should remember that rest means not working, both physically and mentally. Only then is it real rest. When tired, rest. It's simple. Actually, dogs and cats are smarter about this than people. People are stupid enough to rest in ways that destroy their capacity to work.

    Rest and work always go together. There must be a balance: work during the day and rest at night. When the sun comes up, one has plenty of strength to work well and enjoy it. In other words, rest is a kind of investment, so that one has the strength and energy to continue working. So we need rest to work, recognizing that we can't have one without the other. Rest is what recharges our batteries. We need enough time to charge up adequately to the tasks we undertake. Thus, we need to rest correctly; otherwise, illness will occur and also can affect the efficiency of our work.

    Rest can't be skimped. Without enough rest, good work is impossible. This is why we say that rest is another kind of work.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    If you want to become a fluent English speaker, you should take some advice: there are four skills in learning English. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. The most important thing you must remember is that if you want to improve your speaking and writing skills you should first master the skills of reading and listening.

    Read as much as you can. But your reading must be active. It means that you must think about the meaning of the sentences, the meaning of the unfamiliar words, etc.

    There is no need for you to pay much attention to grammar—or try to understand all the unfamiliar words you come across, but the fact you see them for the first time and recognize them whenever you see them, for example in other passages or books, is enough. It would be better to prepare yourself a notebook so you can write down the important words or sentences in it.

    As for listening, there are two choices: besides reading, you can listen every day for about 30 minutes. You can only pay attention to your reading and become skillful at your reading, then you can catch up on your listening. Since you have lots of inputs(输入) in your mind, you can easily guess what the speaker is going to say. This never means that you should not practice listening.

    For listening you can listen to cartoons or some movies that are specially made for children. Their languages are easy. Or if you are good at listening, you can listen to VOA or BBC programs every day. Again the thing to remember is being active in listening and preferably(更好地) taking some notes.

    If you follow these pieces of advice, your speaking and writing will improve automatically(自动地)，and you can be sure that with a little effort they will become perfect.

    I returned home the other night, tired. My husband asked me how my evening was, “Great.” I told him. I had spent 90 minutes in a gym with 10 Ping-Pong tables and all kinds of players, all playing a little ball over the net. By 9 pm, I was excited, tired, satisfied. I had beaten two young men half my age and lost battles against other competitors. To an observer, the night was common. To me, it was a lucky thing that I hadn't expected.

    I had taken up Ping-Pong during college, and in my 30s took more advanced lessons. However, a serious accident hurt my leg, which made me unable to take exercise. Months later, I tried to play Ping-Pong but my leg pained for a week. I put the game out of my mind.

When I was 53, one day my bad leg was working a little bit better. Could Ping-Pong be possible for me, now—in my condition, at my age? I tried to play Ping-Pong again

    Ping-Pong is a sport which requires endurance(耐力). Players need quick foot work and upper body movements to return balls, requiring faster response time than tennis.

    Playing Ping-Pong offers benefits for the brain. A study of 164 women aged 60 and older showed that Ping-Pong improved cognitive(认知)function more than dancing, walking or gymnastics. “The great thing about our sport is that it can be played by anyone,” said Jimmy Butler, a four-time national USA Table Tennis Association winner. “I see 90-year-olds and 10-year-olds.”

    Years passed and my endurance improved. People started to praise my shots. I won a game. Then I won agin. These days, I feel wonderful, I believe this sport is the fountain (源泉)of youth.

    The Lifecycle of a T-shirt

    We all probably have a lot of T-shirts, but do you ever stop and think about the influence of a T-shirt on the planet? You'd probably be surprised to learn what's involved in the lifecycle of just one T-shirt.

    There are 5 major stages: material, production, shipping, use and disposal. The material stage involves farming, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting and ginning. While cotton is a natural fiber and not as harmful to the environment as manmade fibers, it still takes a toll in the material and production stages. Commercial cotton farming uses a large amount of water, and the use of pesticides (杀虫剂) is widespread across the globe, especially in cotton farming. Studies have shown that farmers spend around $4.1 billion on pesticides annually, of which 25% was spent on cotton crops in the US.

    Once the cotton is grown and harvested, so begins the production stage: spinning, knitting, bleaching, dyeing, cutting, sewing, etc.——these processes also use a great deal of water and energy. Commercial dyes and bleaches are harmful pollutants and can eventually pollute groundwater.

    After the T-shirt is produced, it enters the transportation stage. This often involves overseas shipping. Take a look in your closet. Chances are that most of your cotton garments (衣服) are made in China or India. Garments can be shipped via plane, ship or truck…, all of which spill CO₂ into the atmosphere. Calculations show that CO₂ emissions from light trucks alone amount to 1.15 pounds per mile.

    Once the T-shirt reaches the retail market, it is purchased. This stage may seem like the least environmentally damaging part. But consider the number of times you've washed and dried your favorite T-shirt. Washing machines are certainly becoming more efficient. However, the average American household does 400 loads of laundry per year, using about 40 gallons of water per load. Such excessive water use is combined with the large amount of energy used by dryers.

    The final stage of life is disposal. This releases harmful emissions, or involves a landfill where cotton takes years to break down. Current US records show that an estimated 15% of clothes and shoes are recycled, which means that consumers send a shocking 85% of these materials to landfills.

    We all need new clothes every once in a while, but let's all try to keep in mind what goes into the production of clothing... It has a real impact on the planet.

    There are a lot of things you can do to help reduce your impact. Reuse and recycle clothes. If they're too worn out to wear, cut them up and use them as cleaning rags. Donate them to charity or another organization that recycles textiles. When possible, make an effort to buy organic cotton. Turn down the thermostat on your washer, and line dry your clothes when the weather will allow it.

    Can you remember the day when you spoke your first word? If you can, you are unusual. Try to imagine what first few months of your life were like. I am sure you just spent most of your time eating, sleeping and crying. As you grew older, you were awake more of the time. It took your parents more time to play with you and talk to you. You watched and listened curiously (好奇). You began to know that people made certain sounds to go with certain things.

    Then you began to try making the sounds you heard. And step by step you were able to make the right sound for one thing. On that day you came to understand the secret of language. The secret is that a certain sound means a certain thing. One sound might be as good as another. But it is no good as a word unless everybody agrees on its meaning. Only when a group of people use the same set of sounds of things, can they understand each other. Then, and only then do these people have a LANGUAGE.

    After you found the secret of language, you learned words. Some of the words meant things, such as BOOKS, CHAIRS and SHOES. Some words meant doing things, such as GO and SWIM, and other words describe things, such as GOOD and DIRTY. Soon you learned to put words together to express your idea, such as “I want to go out and play with my friends.” This is language. By means of language people can communicate. So we say languages are means of communication.

Gorman is the youngest poet in U. S. history. She became the youth poet laureate (获奖者) of Los Angeles at age 16 in 2014 and the first national youth poet laureate three years later. She has recently completed her studies at Harvard University.

Her mother, Joan Wicks, teaches middle school in Watts. Shuttling among the neighborhoods gave Gorman a window to the world. Her like for poetry dates at least back to the third grade when her teacher read Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine to the class.

Gorman is a lot better at it now, but still working on her confidence as a public speaker. "Until two or maybe three years ago, I couldn't say the letter 'r'. Even to this day sometimes I struggle with it. I'd want to say 'girls can change the world', but I can not say so many letters in that statement, so I'd say things like 'young women can shape the globe'."

For Gorman, writing became a cure. "I used writing as a form of self expression to get my word on the page. So the more I recited out loud, the more I was able to teach myself how to pronounce these letters which for so long had been my greatest impediment." Gorman said she also used a song from Miranda's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical Hamilton to help with her speaking. "But I don't look at my disability as a weakness," said Gorman. "It's made me the performer that I am and the storyteller that I strive to be."

In September, Gorman will release Change Sings, the first of two children's books. The poet says she desires to publish a book "in which kids could see themselves as change-makers in history, rather than just observers".