A broken heart. A sad ending to a love affair. That’s something most of us have experienced, or probably will. After all, it’s part of human life. But no question, the experience can be hard to get over.
But research shows there are pathways through the heartache. Listening to sad music is a major one. It can help you begin to feel joy and hopefulness about your life again. It can arouse (激发，唤醒) the desire (渴望) to connect with others.
Sad music can help heal and uplift you from your broken heart. A recent study from Germany found the emotional influence of listening to sad music is an arousal of feelings of empathy (共情), and a desire for positive connection with others. That, itself, is psychologically healing. It draws you away from concentration on yourself, and possibly towards helping others in need of comfort.
Another experiment, from the University of Kent, found that when people were experiencing sadness, listening to music that was “beautiful but sad” improved their mood. In fact, it did so when the person first consciously accept the situation causing their sadness, and then began listening to the sad music. That is, when they intended that the sad music might help, they found that it did.
These findings link with other studies that show accepting your sad situation emotionally leads to healing and growth beyond it. It seems unbelievable but it does make sense. For example, research from Cornell University, published in Psychological Science, found that accepting discomfort about a life experience or new situation, and viewing it as a step towards growth and change, encourages people to find a pathway through it, beyond it. As Churchill famously said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” That discomfort points you towards creating a plan, a new action. It fuels hope.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 3 and paragraph 4?| A．Sad music can make people help others. |
| B．Sad music can make sad people feel better. |
| C．Sad music can make people believe in themselves. |
| D．Sad music can make people concentrate on themselves. |
| A．Listen to a sad song. | B．Avoid unwise actions. |
| C．Find support from others. | D．Face the discomfort directly. |
| A．By listing figures. |
| B．By giving directions. |
| C．By comparing examples. |
| D．By presenting research findings. |
| A．How to Find Pathways through Heartaches |
| B．How We React to A Broken Heart Matters a Lot |
| C．What We Can Do to Overcome Discomfort in Life |
| D．Why Listening to Sad Music Heals Your Broken Heart |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】In 2009 in southern Germany, people uncovered a flute (长笛) made of an animal’s wing bone. The delicate instrument is one of the oldest known musical instruments on Earth, indicating that people have been making music for over 40,000 years. We can’t be sure exactly when human beings began listening to music. But scientists do know something about why we do.
Doctors at Johns Hopkins University recommend that you listen to music to stimulate your brain. They have found that listening to music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human activity. That’s why they see so much potential in music’s power to change the brain. Besides, just the promise of listening to music can make you want to learn more. In one 2019 study, people were more eager to learn when they expected to listen to a song as their reward.
Music also has a positive effect on your ability to memorize. In one study, researchers asked people to read and then recall short lists of words. They found those who were listening to classical music outperformed those who worked in silence or with white noise. The same study also tracked how fast people could perform a simple task—matching numbers to shapes. A similar benefit showed up. The music of Mozart helped people complete the task faster and more accurately (精确地).
Neurological (神经学的) researchers have found that listening to music encourages the release (释放) of several neurochemicals that play a role in brain function and mental health like dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure, and serotonin, a chemical related to immunity.
1. What does the underlined word “uncovered” mean in Paragraph 1?| A．Discover. | B．Build. | C．Study. | D．Create. |
| A．People are more eager to rest after listening to music. |
| B．People want to learn less in order to listen to music. |
| C．Music has the power to stimulate the brain. |
| D．Music helps the brain to get connected. |
| A．Music can help you memorize effectively. |
| B．Music helps people match numbers to shapes quickly. |
| C．Mozart played music faster and more accurately. |
| D．Classical music performs best in helping to memorize. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Doubtful. | C．Supportive. | D．Critical. |
【推荐2】Language is part of our daily lives, no matter where we live in the world. It is the same with music, whether you listen to it on the radio on your drive to work or sit before an orchestra. Both language and music play a huge role in our culture.
Both language and music have a writing system. In English we record language using the alphabet, which is a collection of letters. In the same way, we use notes to keep a record of music. Just as you are reading this collection of letters on the screen and find meaning in it, musicians read notes and create meaning in the form of music which we can hear.
Both share emotion. How do you know that I am angry? Of course you may be able to see it in my face, but you will know for sure through my words.
| A．Both vary with culture. |
| B．Here are some of their similarities. |
| C．They have some distinguishing characteristics. |
| D．So just as you read English, you can read music. |
| E．Similarly, music can sound angry, sad or happy. |
| F．This also means that there is something for everyone! |
【推荐3】A recent research study suggests that learning music doesn’t make you smarter.
For a while, there was an idea found on the Internet and in various magazines that suggested that babies could become smarter if they listened to Mozart, or to other classical music. Inspired, some parents bought classical CDs for their babies in the hope that this would boost their intelligence. But this so-called “Mozart Effect” has been challenged repeatedly.
But is taking music lessons surely different from just listening to music? Wouldn’t taking music lessons make kids smarter? That’s exactly the question that many researchers over the years have tried to answer. Some of their studies concluded that it does, and some found that it doesn’t. For example, one study showed that music education did not improve reading skills, while another one found a small effect of music on young children’s ability to learn words.
The researchers of the new study, Giovanni Sala (Fujita Health University) and Fernand Gober (London School of Economics), looked at the data behind 54 carefully selected studies, and after carefully comparing the data from different papers, they concluded that children who took music lessons did not score higher on tests that measure their intelligence or academic ability than kids that didn’t learn music.
If music doesn’t make you smarter, how does that explain other research that shows that music lessons help students’ school performance? It seems like there is something about music lessons that makes students able to perform better in their other classes. That doesn’t have to be intelligence, and it’s likely not. Music lessons could have helped in different ways: They could have led to a change in homework habits, they could have increased confidence, or they could have improved social skills. And finally, they also mention that music education could still be beneficial to students’ performance in non-music subject if the music is combined with these classes. So feel free to keep making music, and keep encouraging children to learn music.
1. Which of the following words is closest to the underlined word “boost” in Paragraph 2?| A．Reduce. | B．Improve. | C．Understand. | D．Influence. |
| A．It is most likely to be ineffective. |
| B．It was first presented by Mozart. |
| C．It helps parents take good care of their children. |
| D．It will draw more and more researchers’ attention. |
| A．Listening to music benefits kids a lot. |
| B．Whether music education suits all kids remains unknown. |
| C．Listening to music fail to help kids in language learning. |
| D．Whether taking music lessons makes kids smarter is controversial (有争议的). |
| A．They did 54 small studies in all. |
| B．They observed children in music classes. |
| C．They examined plenty of previous research. |
| D．They did a long-term survey of musical students. |
| A．Music lessons should be encouraged for children. |
| B．Intelligence determines one’s school performance. |
| C．A student’s intelligence can be increased with effort. |
| D．Students should avoid listening to music while studying. |
【推荐1】Recent experiments by psychologists at the University of Pittsburgh shed new light on how we learn and how we remember our real-world experiences. The research, described in the March 12, 2024 online edition of proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggests that varying what we study and spacing out our learning over time can both be helpful for memory.
“Lots of prior research has shown that learning and memory benefit from spacing study sessions out,” said Benjamin, a director of the Causal Learning and Decision-Making Lab at Pitt. “For example, if you cram the night before a test, you might remember the information the next day for the test, but you will probably forget it fairly soon,” he added. “In contrast, if you study the material on different days leading up to the test, you will be more likely to recall it for a longer period of time.”
But “spacing effect” has been based on the idea that what you are trying to learn repeats identically each time. Yet that is rarely the case in real life, when some features of our experience s may stay the same,but others are likely to change. For example, imagine repeat trips to your local coffee shop. While many features may stay the same on each visit, a new barista (咖啡师) may be serving you. How does the spacing effect work in light of such variation across experiences?
In two experiments, researchers asked participants to repeatedly study pairs of items and scenes that were either identical on each repetition or in which the item stayed the same but the scene changed each time. Researchers found that spaced learning benefited item memory. But they also found that memory was better for the items that had been paired with different scenes compared with those shown with the same scene each time.
“It is hard to provide clear advice for things like studying for a test because the sort of material can be so different,” Benjamin said. “But in theory our findings should be broadly relevant to different sorts of tasks, like remembering someone’s name and things about them and learning new vocabulary in a foreign language.”
1. In what way is “spacing effect” challenged in reality?| A．The lack of sufficient learning time. |
| B．The misuse of the memory technique. |
| C．The repetition of the learning process. |
| D．The variability of real-life experiences. |
| A．Integrating spaced repetition into learning. |
| B．Studying intensively the night before a test. |
| C．Linking new information with different tasks. |
| D．Learning materials against various backgrounds. |
| A．Use the name in conversations shortly after meeting them. |
| B．Repeat the name by associating it with different information. |
| C．Practice item memory to create a mental image with the person. |
| D．Engage in active listening when they are introducing themselves. |
| A．The impact of constant spaced study. |
| B．The study of various and self-paced learning. |
| C．The role of varied learning and spaced study. |
| D．The significance of repeated learning sessions. |
【推荐2】We’ve long been taught that helping others helps ourselves. As Charles Dickens wrote, “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
Science has shown that unselfish behaviors actually do improve our health.
In another study, the researchers employed cancer patients living with pain and asked them to cook and clean for themselves or for the benefit of others at their treatment center.
In addition, the study found it was the meaning people gave to their good deeds that predicted how much pain the brain would perceive. Researchers believe the medicine should consider using unselfish “supplement therapies(补充疗法)to treat pain.”
| A．It is true for volunteers. |
| B．Helping others helps ourselves. |
| C．However, more research is needed about the idea. |
| D．It also appears that giving can help us cope with pain. |
| E．When they were helping others, their pain levels dropped. |
| F．Volunteering, for example, has been shown to reduce stress and improve depression. |
| G．Sounds like a great reason to put volunteering and other giving behaviors on your to-do list. |
Science fiction is a world where impossible things can become possible and that’s why most of us like it. But science fiction is not entirely fiction since it is based on science theories (理论). Time travel, for instance, is a theme used by sci-fi writers. Readers may sometimes think writers have first-hand experience of it. I have collected some of the popular ways in which time travel is made possible in science fiction:
● Through the wormhole — A wormhole is a path between points in space-time. According to Einstein, an object can pass through a wormhole if it can travel at the speed of light. An example of a wormhole is described in Riddle of the Red Bible.
● Through a black hole — A black hole is a vacuum (真空) in space where light cannot even escape or pass through. In some sci-fi movies, like Star Trek, black holes became the means to travel through time.
● Through time machines — In science fiction, time machines are vehicles that can travel faster than light. It can be a strange vehicle like the TARDIS in Doctor Who or a special car like the one used in Back to the Future. But these special vehicles would need a wormhole to travel to the past or the future.
● Through parallel universe (平行宇宙) — Another popular way to travel through time is to be able to get into a parallel universe where one can go back to a point in time and see a different reality.
Though we know time travel may not be possible, it is still an entertaining subject and a heated topic for most of us. And in science fiction, where reality is always in the imagination, time does not really matter.
1. The underlined word “enthralled” in Paragraph 1 probably means “_____”.
| A．defeated | B．confused |
| C．shocked | D．attracted |
| A．Time travel might become possible in the far future. |
| B．Time machines can’t travel to the past or the future without a wormhole. |
| C．Sci-fi writers have similar experiences to those they describe in their fiction. |
| D．An object can travel to the past or the future when its speed is faster than light. |
| A．To arouse the heated topic of time travel among readers. |
| B．To introduce how humans travel through time in science fiction. |
| C．To introduce the author’s knowledge of time travel to the readers. |
| D．To compare different ways of time travel mentioned in some science fictions. |
【推荐1】It’s the First Day of Kindergarten, Chloe Zoe!
Chloe Zoe is starting kindergarten! Full days of school for a full week. Chloe Zoe has a new backpack and matching lunch box and is so excited to see her best friends Mary Margaret and George. On the first day of school, Chloe Zoe discovers Mary Margaret is in a different kindergarten class. Will kindergarten be any fun without her best friend?
It’s the First Day of Kindergarten, Chloe Zoe! by Jane Smith
Publication Date: July 1, 2016
Types: Children’s, Fiction
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Albert Whitman &. Company.
ISBN-10: 0807524581
ISBN-13: 9780807524589
Biography
Jane Smith earned her BFA in picture from Columbus College of Art & Design. Upon graduation, she worked as an art director for a children’s novelty book publisher in Los Angeles. Jane currently creates artwork for a variety of publishing and licensing clients (委托客户) at her beach house in California, where she lives with her husband and daughter.
1. Who is the writer of the book?| A．Chloe Zoe. | B．Mary Margaret. |
| C．George. | D．Jane Smith. |
| A．32. | B．81. |
| C．89. | D．73. |
| A．A scientist. | B．An art director. |
| C．A publisher. | D．A painter. |
【推荐2】The tradition of giving gifts didn’t start with the modern holidays we celebrate. Many ancient cultures celebrated holidays with the exchange of gifts. People who love to give gifts often can’t wait until it’s time for the recipients to open their gifts. If you’ve ever been given a gift, you know that part of the fun is the curiosity that builds as you wonder what the gift is.
The wish to hide the identity of a gift until just the right moment led people to wrap gifts long, long ago. Historians believed wrapping gifts in paper probably started not long after paper was invented thousands of years ago.
Wrapping paper like what we use today, though, is a much more recent invention. More than 100 years ago, gifts were usually wrapped in heavy brown paper. Before that, cloth was often used. The technology to mass-produce wrapping paper didn’t come along until the early 1900s. The first American gift wrap company— Hy-Sill Manufacturing Inc. — was founded by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman in 1903. It wasn’t as easy to wrap presents then as it is today, though, because adhesive tape (胶带) wasn’t invented until 1930.
Over the years, wrapping paper has developed into what we see in stores each holiday season. But scientists say that the United States alone produces an extra 5 million tons of waste over the holidays, most of which is from wrapping paper and shopping bags. To cut down on this waste, some people carefully unwrap presents, so that the wrapping paper can be reused. Others have started to use reusable gift bags instead of wrapping paper.
1. What is the interesting part of people giving a gift?| A．Hiding their gifts and their feelings. |
| B．Giving the recipients a surprise. |
| C．Letting the recipients open gifts at once. |
| D．Following a century-old tradition. |
| A．People didn’t wrap gifts until 1903. |
| B．People only used heavy brown paper to wrap gifts. |
| C．Technology made wrapping paper widely available. |
| D．Adhesive tape was first created by gift wrap companies. |
| A．The future of reusable gift bags. |
| B．The waste produced by Americans. |
| C．Wrapping paper’s influence on the environment. |
| D．People’s awareness of saving paper. |
| A．The popularity of wrapping gifts. |
| B．The start of wrapping gifts in paper. |
| C．The problems caused by wrapping paper. |
| D．The story behind wrapping paper. |
【推荐3】A realtor (房地产经纪人) in Missouri is determined to make her hometown “a city where no one sleeps outside”.
For nine years Linda Brown and her husband David organized a nightly drop-in shelter where homeless people in Springfield could eat, shower, do laundry, use a computer, and socialize during bingo games and karaoke, but they wanted to do more. So they transformed an abandoned (废弃的) mobile home property into a village of tiny homes that provides permanent (永久的) housing to the chronically disabled homeless.
They opened Eden Village in 2018, building 31 tiny homes that are now occupied by people like Jonathan Fisher. He had lived on the streets for two years when he met Linda Brown. “In the worst moments of my life, Linda gave me guidance, care, and made me feel like I was still worth something,” Fisher says. He says that Linda took the time to learn about how he became homeless, and then encouraged him as he rebuilt his life. She even offered him a job. Now Fisher works full-time for Linda, helping others experiencing struggles similar to what he went through.
The driving philosophy (哲学) behind Eden Village is as follows: The root causes of a person’s homelessness cannot be thoroughly addressed until his or her immediate housing needs are met. “When I watched my homeless friends walk into a hidden, wet, and cold camp, I realized I had to do something,” Linda said. “And that made me have the idea to build the tiny-home village that serves as a place where the chronically disabled homeless can live with dignity and self-worth.”
“It needs someone who wants to do something, and then believes they can. I’ve watched Linda Brown live that out,” says Nate Schleuter, the chief visionary officer for Eden Village. “It’s exciting to watch the homeless who thought they’d live the rest of their life on the street now have a home.”
1. What does the underlined word “transformed” mean in Paragraph 2?| A．Changed. | B．Divided. | C．Moved. | D．Brought. |
| A．She provided him with short-lived housing. |
| B．She offered him a job and encouraged him to rebuild his life. |
| C．She organized social events for him to attend. |
| D．She offered him guidance on finding food and clothing. |
| A．Every homeless person should be offered a job. |
| B．We should help the homeless quit some bad habits. |
| C．Housing is the key to solving the problem of homelessness. |
| D．Medical treatment should be given to the homeless. |
| A．Respectful. | B．Doubtful. | C．Worried. | D．Friendly. |
