1 . 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 Gobet (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 very beneficial to students’ performance in non-music subjects if the music is combined with these classes. So feel free to keep making music, and keep encouraging children to learn music.
1. What can we learn about the “Mozart Effect”?| 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 fails to help kids in language learning. |
| D．Whether taking music lessons makes kids smarter is controversial. |
| 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．Intelligence determines one’s school performance. |
| B．Music lessons should be encouraged for children. |
| C．A student’s intelligence can be increased with effort. |
| D．Students should avoid listening to music while studying. |
2 . We’re excited to welcome you and your child to the world of ABC Reading Eggs!
Your child’s school has provided access to the award-winning online reading program for kids. The highly personalized learning journey will build your child’s reading skills at their own speed on a fun and safe digital platform (平台).
Your child can use ABC Reading Eggs and ABC Reading Eggspress at home on a computer. They’ll also have access to a huge online library of over 2.500 e-books to enjoy whenever they want!
To use ABC Reading Eggs at home, simply follow these steps:
1. Go to app.readingeggs.com/login.
2. Enter your child’s login (登录) details (see below):
Login name: angus13668 Password: yearl
To create your own parent account, which will let you follow your child’s progress and receive reports, follow these steps:
1. Go to wwwreadingeggs.com.au/liukschool and sign up with your email address and chosen password.
2. At the “Link to School Account” step, enter your child’s login details (provided above).
3. Click on “Start” below your child’s name and you’ re ready to begin your journey!
If you have an existing account, simply select “Add another child” and under Option #2 (“Link a child with a school”), enter your child’s login details and click “Link child”.
If you have any questions, call our friendly customer service team on 02 8585 4020 or email info@readingeggs.com.
We hope you and your child enjoy the ABC. Reading Eggs journey!
1. What can be learned about ABC Reading Eggs?| A．It is famous for its well-decorated library. | B．It offers classes to adults at all levels. |
| C．It is an online reading program. | D．It owns an international school. |
| A．Call his child’s teacher. | B．Create his own parent account. |
| C．Go to app.readingeggs.com/login. | D．Set up an email account for his child. |
| A．An advertisement. | B．An announcement. |
| C．A lesson plan. | D．A guide. |
3 . Sitting in the classroom I felt confused, for I couldn’t read the blackboard. Then Mum took me to the hospital. Within a few days, I was diagnosed (诊断) with a severe visual impairment (视力障碍). In fact, I was practically blind. Amazingly, I’d managed to reach the age of 13 without anyone realizing, not even me! “It all makes sense now,” Mum said. As a kid living on a farm, I was forever falling over things. I was known as the clumsy (笨拙) one to my parents and four sisters. But now, I was being told that I saw the world differently — I could only make out the outlines of things. I was given reading glasses but they didn’t help much.
Refusing to let my diagnosis hold me back, I continued doing everything I loved. As long as everything was in its place, I could feel my way around.
Later I got married to Lance and had amazing kids. I could change nappies (尿布) and dress the kids fine — it just took a little longer as I relied on touch to work out where things were. Cooking, on the other hand, was not my forte. I was terrible — always mixing up sugar and salt!
Nowadays, my grandkids have all been brought up not to leave toys on the floor or move chairs away from the table. “We don’t want Grandma tripping,” Lance will say.
Over the year, I’ve enjoyed lovely family holidays, but sometimes felt like Lance or the kids were too protective of me. So I was thrilled when I booked myself on a trip to the Gold Coast with people who were just like me in a travel company. I’m not missing out — my life is beautiful. I’m so lucky to have a wonderful family and lots of experiences.
Life is precious — you don’t need to “see” that.
1. What can we know from the first paragraph?| A．The reading glasses got the problem fixed. |
| B．She always tripped because she was awkward. |
| C．She got severe visual impairment at the age of 13. |
| D．Nobody realized her sight was poor until she was 13. |
| A．Weakness. | B．Favourite. | C．Strength. | D．Business. |
| A．She is able to see things clearly now. |
| B．She led a lonely and hopeless life. |
| C．She could help care for the kids. |
| D．She went to the Gold Coast all by herself. |
| A．We need to go to travel frequently on our own. |
| B．We should always turn to the family for help. |
| C．Everyone should pay special attention to the blind people. |
| D．Everyone can enjoy the beauty of life with a positive mind. |
4 . Four years ago, Rome Leykin was on his way to work when he accidentally fell onto the tracks of Brooklyn's train as a subway was approaching. The incident resulted in the loss of both of his legs.
But surprisingly, with the loss of his legs, Leykin gained a new passion for racing. Before his accident, he wasn't really that athletic. He would just occasionally play basketball. But that all changed after he was introduced to hand cycling. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is great. You don't even need legs to use it. This is perfect.’” he said. “So, I got on it, I rode and fell in love with it right away.”
Within a few months, he completed the TD Five Boro Bike Tour, a 40-mile ride through New York City. After that, he did his first marathon in 2021. He fished that race in 2 hours and 11 minutes, placing 12th out of 38.
“I'm going to attend this year's marathon and take on challenges. My hands are on the wheel, my eyes are focused, and I think my time is going to speak for itself.” he said. He's made a significant commitment to training. He hand cycles at least 13.1 miles a couple times a week and spends a lot of time in the gym.
And he plans to keep pursuing his athlete goals. He wants to complete the Abbott Six-the world's six largest marathons. One day, he said, he'll maybe even make the Paralympics.
For those who might be following his journey, he hopes they will take some lessons from his story. “There will be ups and downs but the trend is what's important. Focus on the good,” he said. “And also, take your big problems and split them into small solutions. And then all of a sudden, your big problems turn into many small wins.”
1. What can we learn about Rome Leykin from paragraph 2?| A．He once was an excellent basketball player. |
| B．He considered hand cycling difficult in the beginning. |
| C．He made hand cycling more popular among the disabled. |
| D．He showed an interest in hand cycling the moment he saw it. |
| A．Worried. | B．Curious. | C．Confident. | D．Nervous. |
| A．Easy-going and reliable. | B．Kind-hearted and helpful. |
| C．Open-minded and creative. | D．Strong-willed and ambitious. |
| A．Stick to your dreams. | B．Break down your goals. |
| C．Focus on your strengths. | D．Achieve success at all costs. |
5 . Susan had long blonde hair and big blue eyes. So did most of the other children in her school class, which
She decided to try to make herself look
One morning her
“Susan,” her mother said, “You are different. You are unique and special.
Susan went to school that day and looked at all the other kids in her class. “Mom was
| A．encouraged | B．frightened | C．troubled | D．pleased |
| A．special | B．outgoing | C．confident | D．powerful |
| A．beautiful | B．simple | C．different | D．happy |
| A．too | B．either | C．also | D．neither |
| A．neck | B．nose | C．eyes | D．hair |
| A．Though | B．So | C．But | D．And |
| A．attention | B．help | C．prize | D．answer |
| A．father | B．mother | C．sister | D．brother |
| A．pull | B．wash | C．throw | D．tum |
| A．tomorrow | B．next week | C．next year | D．today |
| A．cried | B．slept | C．laughed | D．relaxed |
| A．Everybody | B．Somebody | C．Nobody | D．Anybody |
| A．get up | B．get off | C．put up | D．put off |
| A．wrong | B．right | C．strict | D．kind |
| A．moving | B．interesting | C．tiring | D．boring |
6 . It is difficult for a teacher to decide whether to allow students to listen to music in the classroom. Every time students need to write an essay or work on a problem, they say, “Can I put my headphones on? I think better that way. ” But is that really true? Does music help concentrate?
Research offers little to back up the idea that listening to music improves concentration. In one small study, 133 students performed reading asks while listening to either light music, hip bop, or no music at all. Students who performed the reading tasks in silence scored the highest. Music with a higher intensity (强度) like hip hop distracted the students from their reading tasks mere greatly and had a greater negative effect on task performance and concentration.
Volume (音量) plays a more important role than the type of music. The study found that the louder the music, the worse the performance in concentration. The type of music didn’t matter. Data from the study showed once again that silence was the best environment to improve concentration.
However, music has a positive effect on work performance, Studies have showed that listening to music leads to positive changes in mood, as well as creativity. In fact, in music-listening cultures, which students are certainly part of, there’s actually a change in mood when the music is taken away.
It’s hard to convince my students that music doesn’t help with their concentration.Taj, a senior told me, “I wouldn’t be able to concentrate if I were listening to music and trying to read. However,when I write, I feel like music helps me concentrate deeply. I don’t have writer’s block. It’s easy for me to pat my words on paper.”
“Maybe not with reading, but when it comes to math, listening to music certainly helps,” Danela told me. “You could actually be singing along with what you’re listening to and doing well in math.”
1. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．took the students’ mind off the reading tasks. |
| B．helped the students concentrate more on the reading tasks. |
| C．helped the students better understand the reading tasks. |
| D．prevented the students loving the reading tasks. |
| A．Students do well in reading tasks while listening to music. |
| B．Music can’t improve people’s mood and creativit. |
| C．Different types of music lead to similar performances. |
| D．The volume of music produces a change in concentration. |
| A．They believe music doesn’t help concentrate. |
| B．They use music to help with their paper-writing. |
| C．They can’t focus on reading while listening to music. |
| D．They don’t listen to music while doing math problems. |
| A．Should Students Listen to Music? | B．Does Music Help Concentration? |
| C．Is Music Related to Reading | D．Can Music Change Moo. |
7 . John von Neumann was the oldest of 3 children of a banker, and his speed of learning new ideas and loving problems stood out early. At 17, his father tried to persuade him not to become a mathematician because he might lead a poor life being a mathematician, so von Neumann agreed to study chemistry as well. In 1926, at 23, he received a degree in chemical engineering and a Ph. D. in mathematics. From then on, mathematics provided well enough for him, and he never had to turn to chemistry.
In 1930, von Neumann visited Princeton University for a year and then became a professor there. His first book was published in 1932. In 1933, the Institute for Advanced Study was formed, and he became one of the 6 full-time people in the School of Mathematics (Einstein was one of the others).
World War Ⅱ hugely changed von Neumann’s areas of interest. Until 1940 he had been a great pure mathematician. During and after the war, he became one of the best mathematicians who put mathematical theories into practice. During the last part of the war, he became interested in computing machines and made several fundamental contributions. After the war, von Neumann continued his work with computers, and was generally very active in government service. He received many awards, was president of the American Mathematical Society and was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. He died of cancer in 1957.
Von Neumann made several great contributions and any one of them would have been enough to earn him a firm place in history. He will be remembered as one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
Von Neumann really was a legend in his own time, and there are a number of stories about him. His driving abilities is a part of his legend. He reported one accident this way: “I was driving down the road. The trees on the right were passing me in an orderly fashion at 60 miles per hour. Suddenly one of them stepped in my path.”
1. According to the text, von Neumann’s father believed that _________.| A．a mathematician needed a good memory |
| B．von Neumann had the ability to learn two subjects at the same time |
| C．von Neumann had the gift for solving problems at a high speed |
| D．a mathematician couldn’t earn a lot of money |
| A．25. | B．26. | C．29. | D．32. |
| A．He lost interest in chemistry. |
| B．He began to research how to put mathematics into practice |
| C．He realized the importance of engineering. |
| D．He left college and served at the government department. |
| A．humorous | B．intelligent | C．brave | D．calm |
8 . Famous People Who Begin With Difficulties
Oprah Winfrey
Probably having one of the most famous success stories, Oprah was born into a poor family in Mississippi, raised by a single mother living on welfare. She was physically, and mentally abused during her childhood. Despite her initial struggles as a young girl, she turned herself into one of the most successful talk show hosts of our time.
Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey has been the star of some of the most successful movies of all time. But Carrey grew up extremely poor in Canada. When he was a teenager, his family took security jobs in a factory to help pay the bills. And during his first stand-up comedy performance, he was booed off （喝倒彩） the stage. Not shortly after, he made it big on In Living Color and then went on to star in Dumb & Dumber, The Mask, and Ace Ventura in the same year!
James Dyson
If you thought Thomas Edison’s failures were bad, let me introduce you to James Dyson, the famous inventor of the Dyson vacuums （真空吸尘器） you see all over the television. Dyson developed over 5,000 failed prototypes （原型） before finding the bagless vacuum brand. Not only that, he put his entire savings account into his prototypes over fifteen years! Luckily, the bagless vacuum worked.
Stephen King
Before Stephen King became known as a great living writer—having written over 60 novels, many of which have been adapted for film and television—King was rejected over and over again. In his memoir, On Writing, King describes how he used to post his rejection letters on the wall for inspiration. His first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times.
1. What do Oprah and Jim have in common?| A．They were abused by parents. | B．They grew up in poor families. |
| C．They were hired as comedians. | D．They found jobs in a factory. |
| A．He repaired the failed prototypes. | B．He developed over 5,000 brands. |
| C．He put all efforts into marketing. | D．He invented the bagless vacuum. |
| A．Oprah Winfrey. | B．Stephen King. | C．James Dyson. | D．Jim Carrey. |
9 . The “diet” in diet drinks maybe a false promise for some soda lovers. True, they deliver the taste of a soda experience, without the calories. Yet, new research shows they can also leave people with increased appetite.
A study published recently in JAMA Network open adds to the evidence that drinks made with sucralose, an artificial sweetener (甜味剂), may increase the appetite among some people. “We found females and overweight people had greater brain reward activity after consuming the artificial sweetener,” says study author Katie Page, a physician at the University of Southern California. Both groups ate more food after consuming drinks with sucralose, compared with after regular sugar-sweetened drinks. In contrast, the study found males and people of healthy weight did not have an increase in either brain reward activity or hunger response, suggesting they’re not affected in the same way.
One theory is that it’s not the artificial sweetener itself that has a direct effect on the body. The idea is that artificial sweeteners may confuse the body by tricking it into thinking sugar is coming. “You are supposed to get sugar after something tastes sweet,” explains Swithers, “Your body has been used to that.” But the sugar never arrives, which may lead to the body’s less efficiency in processing sugar that s consumed later.
Swithers’ lab has also documented that when animals with a history of consuming artificial sweeteners get real sugar, their blood sugar levels rise higher than those of animals not fed artificial sweeteners. “It’s a small effect, but overtime this could contribute to potentially significant consequences,” she says. If this is happening in some people who consume diet soda, it could add to the risk of Type 2 diabetes (糖尿病), because when blood sugar rises, the body has to release more insulin (胰岛素) to absorb the sugar. “So what you’re doing is that you are kind of pushing the system harder,” Swithers says.
1. What can we learn from Katie page’s study?| A．Females enjoying diet drinks consume more food. |
| B．Artificial sweeteners help males with better appetite. |
| C．Diet drinks increase hunger response of healthy people. |
| D．people consuming sucralose have greater brain reward activity. |
| A．The effect of sugar. | B．Response to sweetness. |
| C．Artificial sweetener. | D．The absence of sweetness. |
| A．More insulin release helps sugar level rise. |
| B．people drinking diet soda hardly absorb sugar. |
| C．Type 2 diabetes mainly results from artificial sweeteners. |
| D．Consuming artificial sweeteners might cause health problems. |
| A．The potential of artificially-sweetened drinks. |
| B．The wisdom of choosing healthy sweet drinks. |
| C．The underlying link between diet drinks and health. |
| D．The differences among artificially-sweetened drinks. |
10 . “Funny or die” has a whole new meaning, thanks to a study published in April in a medical joumal. Women with a strong sense of humor were found to live longer although they were ill, especially for those with heart problems and infection (感染). Happy men seemed to be protected against infection.
The researchers reported the findings from a 15-year study on the connection between the sense of humor and death among 53,556 women and men in their country. The team studied the influence of humor on people’s way of thinking, social skills and emotion development, and examined death from different conditions: heart problems, infection and other health problems.
The findings showed that for women, those who had high scores on a humorous way of thinking had a 48 percent less risk of death from all causes, a 73 percent lower risk of death from heart problems and an 83 percent lower risk of death from infection. For men, a connection was found only for the risk of death from infection — those with high humor scores had a 74 percent reduced risk. The researchers suggested the sex differences could be due to a small decrease in humor scores as the men aged. No connection was found for the influence of humor on social skills and emotion development.
“The humorous way of thinking plays an important role in people’s personality (性格) and may influence the way people cope with everyday life,” said study co-researcher Sven Svebak. “In this way, it may help reduce fighting in daily life, preventing the build-up of stress.” Although the sense of humor is a natural characteristic (特征), it can also be developed through social activities.
“I expect that children whose parents have no sense of humor when feeing challenges are less likely to develop their sense of humor to cope with everyday life when they grow up,” Sven Svebak said. “But if you had a humorless childhood, never fear — studies show people can learn to be humorous at any age.”
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?| A．Humor could benefit people’s health. |
| B．Joyflil women can live longer than happy men. |
| C．Women who seldom laugh may fall ill easily. |
| D．Humor makes people pay more attention to their health. |
| A．men have poor memories as they age |
| B．men become less humorous as they grow older |
| C．men have bad sleeping quality as they grow older |
| D．men take part in fewer social activities as they age |
| A．By listing data. |
| B．By giving examples. |
| C．By stating arguments. |
| D．By making experiments. |
| A．Humoriess people have an unhappy childhood. |
| B．Children must learn to be humorous at an early age. |
| C．Humorous people can better deal with pressure in life. |
| D．Parents with a sense of humor are better at child education. |
