Unit 10 – A Healthy Lifestyle
Warm-up and Vocabulary
Key Vocabulary
Health and Healthy Habits
- Nutrition: The process of getting the right type of food for health and growth.
- Balanced Diet: A diet that contains the right amounts of all the necessary food groups.
- Physical Activity: Any movement of the body that uses energy.
- Mental Well-being: A state where you can manage your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
- Stress Management: The use of techniques to cope with or reduce stress
Effects and Importance
- Benefit: A helpful or good effect.
- Essential: Absolutely necessary or extremely important.
- Sedentary: Involving a lot of sitting and not much exercise
Interactive Game: Healthy Habit Swap
Work with a partner for this activity.
- Each of you should privately list three healthy habits you have (e.g., “I drink 8 glasses of water a day,” “I walk for 30 minutes every evening,” “I don’t play video games after 9 PM”).
- Share your lists with each other.
- Choose ONE habit from your partner’s list that you think is a good idea.
- Tell your partner which habit you are “swapping” for and explain in one sentence why you think it’s a good habit to adopt.
Example Dialogue:
Student A: “I’m going to swap for your habit of walking for 30 minutes. I think it’s a great way to get some physical activity and fresh air after a long day of studying.”
Building Strong Support: From Topic Sentence to Example
A good TOEFL essay is like a strong building. The introduction and conclusion are the roof and foundation, but the body paragraphs are the strong walls that hold everything up. A weak, undeveloped paragraph will make your whole essay weak.
To build a strong body paragraph, you can use the simple “T-E-E” structure.
- T – Topic Sentence: This is the main idea of the paragraph. It’s one clear sentence that tells the reader what you will discuss.
- E – Explanation: Explain your topic sentence. What does it mean? Why is it important? Give more general information about your main idea.
- E – Example: Give a specific example that proves your point. This is the most important part! Personal experiences or specific facts make your argument convincing.
Let’s see it in action. Imagine your essay argues that regular exercise is crucial for students.
(T) First of all, incorporating regular physical activity into a daily routine is essential for managing academic stress. (E) When students are preparing for exams, they often feel anxious and overwhelmed. Exercise provides a powerful way to reduce these negative feelings because it releases endorphins, which are natural mood boosters. (E) For example, when I feel stressed about an upcoming math test, I find that going for a 30-minute jog completely clears my head. After the run, I am able to return to my studies feeling more focused and calm, which helps me perform better on the test.
Tips for Success
Here are three key tips for writing excellent body paragraphs:
- One Paragraph, One Idea: Never discuss more than one main idea in a single paragraph. If you want to talk about exercise and also about diet, they need to be in two separate paragraphs.
- Make Your Examples Specific: Avoid general examples. Instead of saying, “For example, sports are good,” say, “For example, playing on the school basketball team taught me discipline and teamwork, which are valuable skills in the classroom.“
- Use Transition Words: Transition words are words or phrases that connect ideas between sentences or paragraphs. Making it more coherent, logical, and easy to follow. Start your paragraphs with transition words like First, Second, In addition, or Furthermore to guide your reader smoothly from one idea to the next.
Skill Practice
Let’s practice what you’ve learned!
A. Multiple-Choice Questions
Choose the best answer for each question.
B. Fill in the Blanks
C. Crossword Puzzle
D. Word Search