Giving children music lessons won’t just introduce them to music—it could also greatly improve their language skills but it isn’t understood if this is a side effect of a general improvement of cognitive (认知的) skills, or something that directly affects language processing.
Now, we are getting closer to an answer, thanks to a study of 74 Chinese kindergarten children, led by Robert Desimone from MIT. For the study, Desimone’s team chose children from the Chinese education system, with the support of education officials who wanted to see how it might improve their learning.
The 4 to 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children in the study were divided into three groups. One group received a 45-minute piano lesson three times a week, while another received extra reading instruction classes. The third group acted as controls, taking no extra lessons beyond their usual classes.
The classes lasted for six months, after which the children were tested on their ability to tell words based on differences in tones, consonants (辅音) , or vowels (元音). The test results showed that the children who had taken piano lessons performed better at telling the difference between words that differ by a single consonant, when compared with the children who took extra reading lessons. Compared to the control group, both the music learners and the extra reading group did better in telling the difference between words based on vowel differences.
“It looks like for recognizing differences between sounds, including speech sounds, it’s better than extra reading. That means schools could pay more attention to music,” Desimone says. “It’s not worse than giving extra reading to the children, which is probably what many schools are trying to do—get rid of the art education and just have more reading.”
1. What did the third group learn in the study?| A．Ways to improve their study. |
| B．Extra lessons about reading tips. |
| C．Three extra piano lessons a week. |
| D．Nothing else except their usual studies. |
| A．Learning music determined kids’ interest in study. |
| B．The extra reading group were good at telling vowels. |
| C．Children taking piano lessons didn’t perform well. |
| D．The piano played a key part in kids’ learning. |
| A．Many schools value art education. |
| B．Schools will increase reading classes. |
| C．It isn’t wise to cut back on music lessons. |
| D．Children who learn music perform better at school. |
| A．In a newspaper. | B．In a health report. |
| C．In a biography. | D．In a sports magazine. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Angela Zhang, a Mandopop(华语流行乐)star born on the island of Taiwan, recently appeared on the hot Chinese mainland produced music show Infinity and Beyond. During the show, Angela Zhang sang Yeliya Girl, a song written 34 years ago that witnessed the birth of Mandopop’s “golden age”. After the show, she talked about her music career with the Global Times and said that “Mandopop has become a global trend.”
Speaking of Mandopop’s “golden age”, Zhang told the Global Times that 1980s’ pop songs like Jeff Chang’ s Ai Ru Chaoshui (Love Like Tidewater) left a deep impression on her when she was a little girl. With this appreciation, Zhang finally broke out in the beginning of the 21st century, Mandopop’s peak on the island of Taiwan. “I think one of the great charms of that time was that each singer had a unique personal style and voice too,” Zhang told the Global Times.
Along with other stars like Jay Chou, Mandopop gained more popularity among audience around the world over the decades.
Zhang told the Global Times that the themes in Mandopop have also been shifting from love romance to inner cultivation(修养). “Music is more a reflection of the current state of society. Art and our lives are closely related,” Zhang noted. The 2006 song Invisible Wings brought Zhang some “healing” as it once actually saved a young girl’s life. When buried during an earthquake, the girl kept singing this song, which led to her final rescue.
She said that Mandopop is now receiving more notice from the world with inspirations and treasures from our roots. “Our Chinese culture has lasted for more than 5,000 years and it is necessary to continue to pass it down. They are our roots,” said Zhang.
1. When did Angela Zhang refer to Mandopop’s global impact?| A．On a music show. | B．During the 1980s. |
| C．When talking about her music albums. | D．When interviewed by the Global Times. |
| A．It peaked 34 years ago. | B．Its themes remained the same. |
| C．Jeff Chang was the most popular then. | D．Singers of the time had their own styles. |
| A．Yeliya Girl. | B．Ai Ru Chaoshui. |
| C．Invisible Wings. | D．Infinity and Beyond. |
| A．Mandopop’s Golden Age | B．Mandopop’s Global Popularity |
| C．Angela Zhang’s Incredible Songs | D．Angela Zhang’s Life Experiences |
【推荐2】The term “folk song” has been current for over a hundred years, but there is still a good deal of disagreement as to what it actually means. The definition provided by the International Folk Music Council states that folk music is the music of ordinary people which is passed on from person to person by being listened to rather than learned from the printed page. Other factors that help shape a folk song include: continuity (many performances over a number of years); variation (changes in words and melodies either through artistic interpretation or failure of memory); and selection (the acceptance of a song by the community in which it evolves).
When songs have been subjected to these processes their origin is usually impossible to trace. For instance, if a farm laborer were to make up a song and sing it to a couple of friends who like it and memorize it, possibly when the friends come to sing it themselves one of them might forget some of the words and make up new ones to fill the gap, while the other, perhaps more artistic might add a few decorative touches to the tune and improve a couple of lines of text. If this happened a few times there would be many different versions, the song’s original composer would be forgotten, and the song would become common property. This constant reshaping and re-creation is the essence of folk music. Consequently, modern popular songs and other published music, even though widely sung by people who are not professional musicians, are not considered folk music. The music and words have been set by a printed or recorded source, limiting scope for further artistic creation. These songs’ origins cannot be covered and therefore they belong primarily to the composer and not to a community.
The ideal situation for the creation of folk music is an isolated rural community. In such a setting folk songs and dances have a special purpose at every stage in a person's life, from childhood to death. Epic (史诗) tales of heroic deeds, seasonal songs relating to calendar events, and occupational songs are also likely to be sung.
1. Which of the following statements about the term “folk song” is supported by the passage?| A．The International Folk Music Council invented it. |
| B．It has been used for several centuries. |
| C．There is disagreement about its meaning. |
| D．It is considered to be out of date. |
| A．the songs are generally performed by professional singers |
| B．the songs attract only the young people in a community |
| C．the original composer can be easily identified |
| D．the composers write the music in rural communities |
| A．The standards of the International Folk Music Council. |
| B．Themes commonly found in folk music. |
| C．Influences of folk music on popular music. |
| D．Elements that define folk music. |
【推荐3】A recent story on TikTok showed how two neighbors found companionship during the lockdown because of the pandemic (疫情), thanks to a shared love of the piano.
The story started when Giorgio Lo Porto heard his neighbor playing the piano through their dividing wall. Lo Porto, an Italian living in London, decided to reach out to his neighbor and left a note asking him or her to play My Heart Will Go On. The mystery neighbor agreed, leading Lo Porto to send another note suggesting they play a duet (二重奏) together from the comfort of their own homes. The mystery neighbor started playing the piano at 2:00 pm, and when he stopped after finishing a part of a song, Lo Porto continued. Over time the duets between the two complete strangers became a regular weekend appointment.
Weeks later, the pair finally met and it was better than expected. The mystery pianist happened to be a 78-year-old Polish man named Emil, who was living in temporary accommodation until his house was sold. He lost his wife in December due to COVID-19 and all he had left was the piano. And the reason why he played at 2: 00 pm every weekend was that he and his wife used to do that.
The pair finished a final duet together — Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata — before Emil moved out at the end of February.
While this is heartwarming in itself, the story has a heartbreaking ending: On March 14, Lo Porto shared that his old neighbor had passed away in his sleep. He said, “Now he is reunited with his wife.”
While saying goodbye to Emil, Lo Porto wrote, “Dear Emil, I knew very little about you, but you changed my life. You gave me back my passion, and we shared that with the world. You’ll be in my heart. I’ll keep playing, thinking of how powerful music can be. You said I was your light, but you’ve been mine, too. Bye, Emil.”
1. What happened after Lo Porto left the second note for Emil?| A．They composed a new song based on a classic. |
| B．They reached out to neighbors to cheer them up. |
| C．They shared their playing skills with TikTokers. |
| D．They performed music together through the wall. |
| A．To upload his updates. | B．To remember his wife. |
| C．To advertise his house. | D．To comfort strangers. |
| A．Emil's passing away. | B．Lo Porto’s departure. |
| C．The pair’s final performance. | D．The unfamiliarity between the pair. |
| A．He admired Emil’s ambition. | B．It is easy to say goodbye. |
| C．Emil positively influenced him. | D．Music is a universal language. |
【推荐1】“Body clocks” are biological methods of controlling body activities.Every living thing has one.In humans,a body clock controls normal periods of sleeping and waking.It controls the times when you are most likely to feel pain.Eating,sleeping and exercising at about the same time each day will help keep body activities normal.But changes in your life—a new job,for example—destroy the balance and thus cause health problems.You could have difficult sleeping,for example.Scientists suggest that early afternoon is the best time of day for physical exercise. They say we are stronger and faster then.Later,about four o'clock,most people feel tired because of the drop of sugar level in the blood.Early afternoon also is a good time to do tasks about memory（记忆） and mathematics.If you must study,however,do it just before going to sleep at night.Scientists say you are more likely to remember information when there is a short delay（耽搁）between study and bed.Body clocks control all the activities from day to day.They also produce changes about every ninety minutes during the day.At the end of such a time period,our ability to think hard begins to become weak.That is the time we are most likely to day-dream.Within fifteen minutes, we are ready to go back to what we were doing.
1. According to the passage,_____.| A．one can always keep balance in the "body clock" |
| B．scientists can control body activities |
| C．body activities are under the control of an unseen force（力，力量） |
| D．the human body is seldom in balance |
| A．the body clock | B．growing old |
| C．possible illnesses | D．difficulty in sleeping |
| A．we feel tired of doing anything else | B．the level of sugar in the blood drops |
| C．we cannot study then | D．our body is most active then |
| A．at night | B．late afternoon |
| C．at about 4 o'clock pm | D．in the morning |
【推荐2】Have you read this before? 10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react. That is the 90/10 Principle. You really have no control over 10% of what happens to us, but you determine the other 90%.
Let’s use an example. You are eating breakfast with your family. Your daughter knocks over a cup of coffee onto your business shirt. You severely scold your daughter and she breaks down in tears. After scolding her, you blame your wife for placing the cup too close to the edge of the table. A short verbal battle follows. You storm upstairs and change your shirt.
Back downstairs, you find your daughter has been too busy crying to finish breakfast and she misses the bus. You rush to the car and drive your daughter to school. After a 15-minute delay and throwing $60 traffic fine away, you arrive at the school and your daughter runs into the building without saying goodbye.
After arriving at the office 20 minutes late, you find you forgot your briefcase. Your day has started terrible. As it continues, it seems to get worse and worse. You look forward to coming home, yet when you arrive home, you find a small wedge in your relationship with your wife and daughter.
Why did you have a bad day? Did the coffee cause it? Did your daughter cause it?
Here is what could have and should have happened.
Coffee splashes over you. Your daughter is about to cry. You gently say, “It’s ok honey, you just need, to be more careful next time”. Grabbing a towel you rush upstairs. After grabbing a new shirt and your briefcase, you come down in time to look through the window and see your child getting on the bus. She turns and waves. You arrive 5 minutes early and cheerfully greet the staff. Your boss comments on how good the day you are having.
Notice the difference? Two different scenarios. Both started the same. Both ended different.
1. According to the text, what happens after the coffee incident?| A．The mother gets to work late. | B．The couple have an argument. |
| C．The father has a traffic accident. | D．The daughter finishes breakfast soon. |
| A．To prove the 90/10 principle. | B．To compare different attitudes. |
| C．To give advice on self-control. | D．To show the importance of harmony. |
| A．Improvement. | B．Wound. | C．Disadvantage. | D．Change. |
| A．Your coffee. | B．Your family. | C．Your experience. | D．Your reaction. |
【推荐3】We truly are what we eat—and what our ancestors ate. Food has changed who we are and how we developed for hundreds of thousands of years. From processing to preserving to cooking, what humans did and continued to do to food played a big role in shaping our evolution. “Processed food isn’t just a modern invention, created in factories from artificial ingredients. It is as old as humanity itself and may have helped create our species,” wrote Nicola Temple, author of “Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food,” for the BBC.
Although processing is viewed negatively nowadays, it was important to our development as a species. Processing doesn’t necessarily mean adding chemicals—it also includes pounding(捣碎) or slicing or changing the food in any way before eating. Compared to our ancestors, modern human teeth, jaws and faces have gotten smaller relative to overall skull (头骨) size because of making food easier to chew, especially from cooking.
Cooking food was one of the biggest changes in human history. Researchers believe it could have occurred between 1.8 million and 400,000 years ago, Harvard professor Richard Wrangham said, according to “National Geographic.” Cooking increases the energy and nutrients we get from food. Without cooking, an average person would have to eat around 5 kilos of raw food to survive—and we’d have to spend most of the day chewing.
Also, up to 50 percent of women who only eat raw foods develop a condition that signals that the body cannot support a pregnancy—a major problem from an evolutionary angle, according to “Scientific American.” Processing food led to a huge gain in free time. The less time people spent chewing, the more time they had to develop complex spoken language.
Cooking food also breaks down its cells, so our stomachs need to work less to absorb the nutrients our bodies require, which, said Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University, UK, “freed up energy that could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut (肠道).” Processed food literally shaped us as a species and made us human—the only species on Earth who can cook.
1. What is the author’s view about food processing?| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Neutral. | D．Unclear. |
| A．Making people gain more weight. | B．Making people burn more energy. |
| C．Making people chew for more time | D．Making people save time when chewing. |
| A．They can have babies more easily. | B．They can learn new languages. |
| C．They spend less time in processing food. | D．They have more time to do what they like. |
| A．Whether we should process food. | B．Food and human evolution. |
| C．The benefits of cooking food. | D．The way we cook food changes. |
【推荐1】Almost everyone gossips. And a new study finds that people spend about 52 minutes per day, on average, talking to someone about someone else who is not present.
But here’s the surprise: Despite the assumption that most gossip is trash talk, the study finds that the vast majority of gossip is non-judgmental chitchat.
“People love to talk about other people,” says Jeremy Cone, a psychologist at Williams College. “Think about your own conversations with a family member or friend: You talk about everyday things that keep you connected. You share that your daughter got her driver’s license or your uncle has a kidney stone. Much of it is just documenting facts.”
And, of course, the study also finds that some gossip is negative or mean-spirited. About 15% of the snippets of gossip that the researchers analyzed included some types of negative judgements.
But even negative gossip can serve a purpose, as more research has found.
“I think gossiping can be a smart thing to do,” says Elena Martinescu, a researcher at King’s College London who has studied gossip in the workplace. “It allows people to keep track of what’s going on and form social alliances with other people.”
Research has shown that gossip can help build group cohesion and cooperation. “When you gossip, you can keep track of who is contributing to the group and who’s being selfish,” Martinescu explains. “And by sharing this information, you can exclude those group members who are social loafers.”
“We also found that negative gossip makes people likely to repair the aspects of their behavior that they were criticized for,” Martinescu says.
So, say, for instance, you were criticized for always arriving at work late. Hearing that gossip about yourself may motivate you to want to be on time.
Of course, this isn’t a license to be a loose lips or to repeat baseless claims that can damage someone’s reputation unfairly. But confiding（吐露个人隐私）in your friends and colleagues and sharing impressions about another person—even when they’re negative—may be helpful.
1. According to Jeremy Cone, why do people often gossip?| A．To spread negative facts. |
| B．To satisfy others’ curiosity. |
| C．To injure others’ reputation. |
| D．To share social information. |
| A．It can improve people’s social skill. |
| B．It can rid society of immoral behavior. |
| C．People may change their behavior for the better. |
| D．People may be kept informed of others’ privacy. |
| A．Critical. | B．Objective. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Contradictory. |
| A．Gossip is the last thing we can do. |
| B．Gossip can do more good than harm. |
| C．Gossip may not be as harmful as it sounds. |
| D．Gossip is the best way to build social bonds. |
【推荐2】A NASA-led international mission launched a radar (雷达) satellite from southern California. The satellite will be involved in a major project to research the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers.
The satellite is called SWOT, short for Surface Water and Ocean Topography. It is designed to give scientists a never-before-seen view of the Earth’s water, which covers about 70 percent of the planet.
About the size of a car, the satellite uses advanced microwave radar technology to collect detailed height and surface measurements of all bodies of water. The data will provide researchers with more information on the effects of climate change.
Data will be taken from radar readings of the planet at least two times every 21 days. The information will help study ocean currents, predict the weather, and control freshwater supplies in areas with little rain.
One major goal of the mission is to research how oceans absorb atmospheric heat and carbon dioxide (CO2) — the natural process that slows down temperatures and climate change.
SWOT is designed to measure small differences in surface heights around smaller currents, where much of the oceans’ reduction of heat and carbon is believed to happen. And SWOT can do so with 10 times more accurate (精确的) details than existing technologies.
The world’s oceans are estimated (估计) to have absorbed more than 90 percent of the extra heat trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Studying how that happens will help climate scientists answer an important question: What is the turning point at which oceans start giving off, rather than absorbing, huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere?
The satellite will also be used to study the effects of rising ocean levels. And it will be able to measure all rivers wider than 100 meters, as well as more than 1 million lakes and bodies of water larger than 6.25 hectares.
1. What will the data of the satellite help researchers do?| A．Study the movement of fish. | B．Increase freshwater supplies. |
| C．Better learn about global warming. | D．Count the number of sea creatures. |
| A．Its accuracy. | B．Its size. | C．Its speed. | D．Its purpose. |
| A．Ocean levels start to change. | B．The sea starts to give off heat. |
| C．Oceans will absorb extra heat. | D．Greenhouse gas will increase. |
| A．Exploring Oceans’ Effects On Climate | B．Space Technology Used To Study The Earth |
| C．Finding Out The Systems Of Water On The Earth | D．Studying The Water Around The World From Space |
【推荐3】If you enjoy American stories, you'll have noticed that quite a few of them take place on the road. The United States is a vast country whose long highways connect very distant places. Many famous American novels and films are about stories that occur while their characters are traveling along these highways. These novels are often celebrations of American life.
Jesmyn Ward's National Book Award winner Sing, Unburied, Sing is a road novel, but not a celebration. The road journey here is through Mississippi as an African-American mother and her two children travel to collect her white husband -the children's father -as he's released from jail.
Nether the mother Leonie, nor the father Michael, are ideal parents. Leonie in particular is so full of anger and regret that she takes out her unhappiness on her children, the 13-year-old Jojo and his little sister Kayla. And the pain of lacking proper financial support makes the journey even harder.
The telling of the story is divided between various narrators. Jojo, the boy, is the most sympathetic of them. But it is worrying to read about how he experiences the world. Even though he's young. he's already experienced the dark side of life. The opening sentence of the book gives a sense of Jojo's unnatural maturity. "I like to think I know what death is. I like to think that I could look at it straight. "This maturity is tested when a white policeman pulls a gun on him when Jojo puts his hand in his pocket.
But who, or what, is to blame for these sad circumstances? For Ward, it's clearly the past. She admires the work of fellow novelist William Faulkner. When she thinks about the past, she's of the same mind as him.
Faulkner famously wrote: “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” At one point. Ward says that her characters are “pulling the past with them,” like a too-heavy trailer coupled to the car as they journey on through Mississippi to the jailhouse. The biggest part of this past, of course, is racism -the remains of slavery -which is always there, and ruining life.
This is probably why The Washington Post listed Sing, Unburied, Sing as one of its 10 choices of 2017's Best Books. “The plight of this one family is tired to crimes that stretch over decades.” wrote the newspaper. “These are people pulling all the weight of history.”
1. What can we learn about Sing, Unburied, Sing from the article?| A．It was recently adapted as a film. | B．It's a celebration of American life |
| C．It's one of 2017's best-selling American novels. | D．It is a story of a road trip through Mississippi. |
| A．is the main narrator of the novel | B．is the youngest child in the family |
| C．fights with a white policeman on the road | D．shows an unusually mature mind of a child |
| A．The unhappy marriage of the parents | B．The lack of educational opportunities |
| C．The remaining slavery and racism. | D．The lack of financial support from the government. |
