Have you any favourite pastime?
Look, Listen & Say
A. Look at the pictures. What are the persons doing here? When do they do these kinds of activities? Do you think these activities can be taken as professions?
These pictures show people playing chess, gardening, planting flowers, listening to music, taking photographs, doing physical activiies, reading newspapers, drawing pictures, watching television and writing letters. People engage in these kinds of activities when they have leisure time to spend. Yes, I think they can be taken as professions. It is often found that people do better in a profession that they have passion for. People seem happier when their hobbies become their profession.
C. Read the following texts. Then check (✔) the statements below:
Yoga: Tap into the many health benefits
Understanding yoga
Yoga is a kind of posture and breathing exercise. It brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peace of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety. Traditional yoga puts emphasis on behavior, diet and meditation. But if you're just looking for better stress management--and not an entire lifestyle change-yoga can still help. Youga trainers gradually choose easier to complex activities for practitioners. However, all practitioners do not necessarily need the same kinds of practice.
The health benefits of yoga
The potential health benefits of yoga are numerous and may include:
-
• Stress reduction. With its quiet, precise movements, yoga draws your focus away from your busy, chaotic day and towards calm as you move your body through poses that require balance and concentration.
-
• Increased fitness. As you learn and refine new poses, you may enjoy improved balance, flexibility, range of motion and strength. And this means you're less likely to injure yourself in other physical endeavors or in your daily activities.
-
• Management of chronic health conditions. Yoga might help in a variety of health conditions, such as cancer, depression, pain, anxiety and insomnia, fatigue and mood shifts. Yoga can also help reduce heart rate and blood pressure.
-
• Weight loss. If you're overweight or have eating disorder, yoga may help you make the healthy lifestyle changes necessary to gain control of your eating and reduce weight.
While you shouldn't expect yoga to cure you or offer you 100 percent relief, it can help some health conditions when combined with standard treatment. And if you already enjoy good health, yoga can be an enjoyable supplement to your regular fitness routine.
G. Read the text.
Hi, I'm Shyam. I'm from Magura. Although it's the district headquarters, it's a small town. I'm in grade 9 now in Chander Haat Bidyaloya. I love games and sports very much. My father was an athlete in his student life. He inspires me to follow his footsteps and take part in games and sports or do some exercise besides my studies. So I get up early in the morning and take a walk with my father almost every day. We walk for about an hour. At school, during break I play kabadi, gollachhut, badminton, table tennis, and carom. Sometimes I practise the high jump and the long jump outside the school campus. Playing football is a passion for me. I like watching television too.
I watch sports programmes on different TV channels during my free time. I'm a fan of National Geographic, Discovery, and Animal Planet for their documentaries as they are quite interesting as well as educative. Recently my father has presented me with a camera as he was very happy with the result of my Junior School Certificate exam. When I hold the camera, I feel so excited! I wish I could be an amateur photographer in future - not to take only personal photographs at different parties but to shoot our beautiful Bangladesh. I'm sure that soon photography will be my most favourite pastime.