14级实践学期-晚自习阅读篇章.doc

Passage 1 Fitness hits social media Yang Yang, a 20-year-old finance student at Xiamen University, sent two simple words to his WeChat friends: “Day 366.”In today’s youth culture, posts like Yang’s are called “signing in”. They keep track of how many days someone has exercised, but they also allow fitness enthusiasts to show off to their friends.Unlike posts involving food and travel photos, exercise photos on social media can have positive effects on both readers and content creators, according to psychology experts. Social media can even help promote workouts as popular societal trends.“Everybody wants to show his or her best side to other people, in order to gain acknowledgement and praise,” said Chen Zhilin, member of the Chinese Psychological Society. “Exercise photos can act as motivation. It encourages the person who posted the photo to achieve better workout results, and it pushes readers to do so as well.”Though he is now inspiration for other *aspiring fitness *buffs, Yang himself was once inspired by his classmates to do exercise on a daily basis.“Maintaining a workout routine and sharing it is not uncommon among my circle of friends. Even my way of ‘signing in’ is not that impressive, since many of my friends are using apps to post their running routes, the number of calories they burned and before-and-after shots of their muscles,” Yang said.A 2010 Los Angeles Times article said personal health behaviors can spread quickly on social media, “just as germs scatter after a sneeze”. And with the help of social media, creative workout posts like Yang’s might incite others to adopt healthier lifestyles. From 21st Century 第1116期 Passage 2 Learn English to get ahead at work After trying and failing to obtain a CET-4 certificate four times, Yang Lin, a 21-year-old engineering major at a Beijing-based university finally gave up. “It may be necessary for an English major to get a language certificate, but for students like me, a CET-4 certificate isn’t a mus