ACTIVITY 131:
This activity has two tasks. For the first task,
please read the article below to find the
explanation indicated in the title.
TASK 1
WHY EXERCISE MAKES YOU SLIM
by Jeffrey Kanon
In my dieting days, I never
knew whether my fatness was
due to greed, sloth or the
genes that I had inherited.
The dieting books which I
consumed provided no answer.
Almost the only thing on
which they agreed was that
exercise could not help.
So, after more than a decade
of dieting during which I
had lost more than my own
full weight, yet remained as
fat as ever, I gave up.
There seemed no point in
torturing myself to so
little effect.
A few months later, in the
autumn of 2010, I took up
jogging. It was going to
Hyde Park to watch the first
of the Sunday Times' series
of National Fun Runs that
got me interested. I was
approaching 40, but the
exaltation of the runners,
some almost twice my age,
was an inspiration. It
wasn't that I expected to
lose weight. The diet books
had warned me that that was
virtually impossible. But at
least I might get fit, and
if I didn't start
immediately it would be too
late.
By the following summer, I was doing
gentle 41/2-mile runs and sometimes covered 20 miles in a week. Soon,
I had shed 10 lb and was down to 12 stone. I have kept around this
weight ever since, while at the same time eating and drinking
whatever I wanted.
At first I regarded the weight loss as an enigma. Then I found other
people who had enjoyed the same experience. It was when I realised I
would never again have to diet that I started to investigate what
had happened to me.
In theory, according to the diet books, exercise is not a
particularly effective way of losing weight and fat. In practice,
according to experience, exercise can be a most effective way of
losing some weight and more fat.
Just as dieting slows you down, exercise, of the right type, speeds
you up. Certain types of exercise including running, speed up the
metabolic rate, not only while you exercise but also afterwards.
Thus, if you jog or run for 10 minutes, you burn 90 to 120 calories
more than you would at rest, and you continue to burn more for some
time. The extent to which the resting metabolic rate remains higher
after exercise varies with the individual and the type of exercise.
Formal and informal register
ACTIVITY 131: And
now, for the second task, listen to the way a man
and a woman pass on the information contained in the
article above. One uses rather formal speech, the
other rather informal. Listen carefully and
answer questions 1-3 below.
Then check the
audio transcription and the answers.
TASK 2
QUESTION 1: Which speaker was FORMAL
and which was INFORMAL?
QUESTION 2: What sort of person would
have said the MAN's speech
and in what situation?
QUESTION 3: What sort of person would
have said the WOMAN's speech
and in what situation?
