Reading Comprehension (8th form)

Texting while walking is dangerous

Writing text messages and walking is dangerous. It is more dangerous than driving and texting. More people get injured while walking than driving.

Texting while walking is ____________________ .

Walking in a straight line is not easy. We can forget how to walk properly. Dangerous things can happen. We run into people or cars. We fall over things in the street.

When we're writing text messages while walking we ________________ .

There are a few reasons why texting and walking is dangerous. People cannot see when they look at their keyboard. Their minds are somewhere else – they are not thinking about walking safely. Thousands of people have accidents. Some have serious head injuries.

Some people can be hurt in their ____________ .

Too much jogging could be a problem!

Running is good for our health. A recent study says that running too much is bad for us and it doesn’t always make our lives longer. A specialist said too much running can damage your heart. Long-distance runners and people who never exercise can have the same risk of having a heart attack.

Too much running could make our lives __________ .

Experts looked at the health of 3,300 runners. Most of them ran over 30 kilometres a week. Marathon runners had hard parts in their heart.

How many runners did the researchers look at?

A doctor who started running in 1967 is sad. He ran 60 kilometres every week. He thought his heart was strong. Now he has heart problems. He said we should exercise, but not too much.

A doctor who started running in nineteen sixty-seven _____________

Growing up poor

My name is Mike, and I was born in a very poor neighbourhood in Los Angeles. When I was little my mother took care of my brother and me, because my father left before I came to this world, and he wasn’t too interested in being a part of our lives. 

Mike didn’t know his father.

My mother had to work two jobs, which didn’t pay much; she had to work very hard so that we could have food, clothes and a place to live. She was great; we really loved her and appreciated her efforts.

Every day, she usually arrived home very late and she was very tired, but she always cooked nice meals for us, and played with us, and she made sure that we did our homework. 

His mother didn’t have enough money to buy food.

She always insisted on how important it was to get a good education. She couldn’t finish school because she got pregnant with me when she was just a teenager. “I couldn’t finish school, and that’s why I must work so hard now, and I earn so little money,” she often said.

She didn’t finish school because she had Mike.

Children were very violent in my neighbourhood. The truth is that you needed to be violent if you wanted to survive, and there were lots of crime and vandalism, and drugs. It was difficult to be a good student for any child who lived in our neighbourhood. The other children at school hated you if you got good grades, so I wasn’t very popular.

Mike took drugs.

The only positive thing about living in that place is that you needed to be very clever to survive, and that helped me later in life.

He thinks living in his neighbourhood was very positive.

Finally, my brother and I could finish high school, and I went to university because I was a very good basketball player, and basketball paid for my university degree. The day of my graduation my mother was in tears. And she was in tears again the day I showed her our new apartment, away from the neighbourhood. Do you know how difficult it is to get out of a poor neighbourhood? It’s very, very hard, but I did it, and it was thanks to my mum. Now she doesn’t have to work two jobs any more, and I take care of her.

He isn’t living with his mother at the moment.