Reading Tasks


1.  The article below has been altered. Correct the mistakes or the language in Italics, try and
make the article sound more formal in its written style.


Introduction
Flexibility is a meaningful component of fitness. However, we also need it to do things everyday.
In order to improve one's flexibility or range of motion, people say it is good for an individual
to perform some type of stretching routine. Many people are stretching before or after engaging in
a workout. Usually the purpose is to reduce risk of injury, to improve athletic performance, or to
lower how sore muscles get.
One thing that people don’t agree on that exists concerning stretching is not why, but when, it
should be done. Muscles and connective tissues should be more responsive to stretching exercises
when they are done after the long, tiring part of a workout. How hot muscles are are at their
highest, stiffness decreases, and extensibility increases. Because of the increase in muscle
temperatures, stretching is safest and most productive during the cool down phase. Stretch after
this endurance phase also makes sure the muscle relaxes, makes the blood flow better to the joints
and surrounding tissues, and removes unwanted waste products, thus goes down the muscle stiffness
and soreness.
We did a six week study to try and look at static stretching placed before, after, and before and
after an exercise session to try and find out which placement produced the greatest gains in how
flexible muscles are. Although the study was revealing that improvements can be made with a static
stretching program, no big enough differences among the 3 experimental groups were finded. In
another study, subjects had been performing static stretching either before or after jogging. How
strong the jogging happened was not controlled. Both the stretching before jogging and the
stretching after jogging groups went up their flexibility in several areas, but differences between
the 2 groups were really quite different.

                                   (adapted from Beedle et al, Journal of Strength and Conditioning
Research, Aug 2007)



Identify the sections of the following paragraph? What do the sections in different colours
signify?

Using storytelling in educational settings can enable educators to connect with their students
because of inborn tendencies to for humans to listen to stories.  Written languages have only
existed for between 6,000 and 7,000 years (Daniels & Bright, 1995) before then, and continually
ever since in many cultures, important lessons for life were passed on using the oral tradition of
storytelling.  These varied from simple informative tales, to help us learn how to find food or
avoid danger, to more magical and miraculous stories designed to help us see how we can resolve
conflict and find our place in society (Zipes, 2012). Oral storytelling traditions are still
fundamental to native American culture and Rebecca Bishop, a native American public relations
officer (quoted in Sorensen, 2012) believes that the physical act of storytelling is a special
thing; children will automatically stop what they are doing and listen when a story is told.
Professional communicators report that this continues to adulthood (Simmons, 2006; Stevenson,
2008).  This means that storytelling can be a powerful tool for connecting with students of all
ages in a way that a list of bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation cannot.  The emotional
connection and innate, almost hardwired, need to listen when someone tells a story means that
educators can teach memorable lessons in a uniquely engaging manner that is common to all
cultures.

This cross-cultural element of storytelling can be seen when reading or listening to wisdom tales
from around the world...

(Adapted from: https://canvas.hull.ac.uk/courses/778/pages/paragraph-structure)