1 . Issues such as global warming and sustainability have become passionate concerns for many of the concert industry’s fans and increasingly for the musicians. Coldplay, a pop band whose members scored their first big hit in 2000 with a song called Yellow, announced in November that it wouldn’t go on tour to promote its latest album, Everyday Life, until it could find a way to make concerts more sustainable and greener to the environment.
It’s not always easy to walk the talk. A growing number of artists, including Peggy Gou, have environmental demands built into their contracts when they tour, such as bans on plastic tableware. But there’s almost no way of avoiding carbon emissions produced by a tour, which involves moving hundreds of people and tons of equipment across large distances.
Lisa Pomerantz, who books travel for acts says that real change will require action by venue owners, concert promoters, and the fans. Major acts like Coldplay can afford to stop touring while figuring out how to lessen their environmental impact. But lesser-known artists can’t stay off the road, since streaming earnings haven’t been able to compensate (弥补) for the collapse in CD and downloaded music sales. Even when concerts are aggressive about being more sustainable, the impact of audience travel can easily swamp (淹没) their efforts. For bigger acts, this can represent as much as 80% of the carbon footprint, according to a 2015 study. Another analysis showed that roughly a third of the tour’s carbon footprint came from a venue’s power consumption.
Still, even the most green-conscious bands must balance their desire to be more sustainable against the financial necessity of touring. “I absolutely think you can go on tour and have a concern about the environment. It’s a matter of just keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible,” says Flavian Graber, lead singer of We Invented Paris.
1. Why did Coldplay stop its promotion tour?| A．Because it had already released a hit. | B．Because it wanted a more environmentally friendly concert. |
| C．Because its latest album needed further improvement. | D．Because they could afford the money. |
| A．Make it. | B．Talk it. | C．See it. | D．Appreciate it. |
| A．Stopping bands’ promotion tours. |
| B．Downloading music on the Internet. |
| C．Cutting down venues’ water and electricity consumption. |
| D．Combining efforts of bands, audiences and venue owners. |
| A．Achievable. | B．Fruitless. | C．Challenging. | D．Controversial. |
2 . Music is not just a set of sounds and rhythms. Its influence on the brain is much deeper than any other human experience. Keep on reading to know all those amazing powers of music.
A recent study suggests that preterm (早产的) babies appear to experience less pain and feed more when listening to music. Experts led by Dr. Manoj Kumar of the University of Alberta, Canada, found that music had a beneficial effect on reducing pain for preterm babies experiencing painful medical tests. It also appeared to benefit full-term babies during operations.
Many people experiencing brain damage have speech and movement-related problems. Music can help recover from brain injuries. As a different and effective treatment, doctors often advise such patients to listen to good music to improve the parts of the brain responsible for these two functions. When people with neurological (神经系统的) disorders hear a musical beat, it helps them to regain a balanced walk.
Though music cannot make deafness disappear, it really can stave off the loss of hearing. There was an experiment involving 163 people where 74 were musicians. Participants were asked to pass some listening tests. Musicians heard the sounds better than non-musicians, and this difference gets clearer with age. This means that a 70-year-old musician bears better than a 50-year-old non-musician, even in a noisy environment.
Besides, music mends a broken heart. It is not about a thrown-away love, but about a heart attack. The matter is that music can help people recover from a heart attack or heart operation by reducing blood pressure, slowing down the heartbeat rate, and reducing anxiety. Listening to the quality music produces positive emotions, improves the movement of blood, and expands blood vessels, thus, promoting quick recovery of the whole cardiovascular (心血管的) system.
1. How does music affect preterm babies?| A．It helps reduce their pain. |
| B．It helps develop their potential in music. |
| C．It helps improve their hearing systems. |
| D．It helps repair their neurological systems. |
| A．导致 | B．增强 | C．延缓 | D．促进 |
| A．It has a positive effect on human body systems’ work. |
| B．It can help people prevent diseases caused by anxiety. |
| C．It helps make a person feel optimistic about life. |
| D．It can help patients recover in a slow way. |
| A．Who can benefit from music | B．The best time to listen to music |
| C．The way to choose quality music | D．How music affects our mind and body |
| 情绪状态 | 推荐听的音乐 | 音乐作用 |
| 感到压力大，过分焦虑 | 流行音乐 | 放松身心 |
| 沉迷电脑游戏，兴奋过度 | 乡村音乐 | 平复心情 |
| 感到孤独、悲伤 | 轻音乐 | 心情愉快 |
2. 适当增加情节以使行文连贯；
3. 开头已给出，不计入总词数。
Enjoy music
Today I thought I would blog about music.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. Which generation is Liu Wenwen for performing suona in her family?| A．The seventh generation. |
| B．The eighth generation. |
| C．The third generation. |
| A．Because the voice of the instrument annoyed her neighbors. |
| B．Because the park is beautiful. |
| C．Because she didn’t like practicing at home. |
| A．Liu had a personal concert in Sydney. |
| B．Liu performed with award-winning composer. |
| C．Liu was followed by Chinese. |
| A．About 20 years. |
| B．Less than 20 years. |
| C．More than 20 years. |
| A．The concert is put off. |
| B．The man got tickets at last. |
| C．The woman should go to the concert as well. |
6 . The Beatles have released the last song they recorded. The song is titled “Now and Then”. It was written by John Lennon in 1977. He sang it at the piano and recorded it in 1979 at his home. The other Beatles added to the track over the years. Recording engineers used AI technology to bring the song to life, resulting in a sound like the four Beatles recorded it together in a studio. The song has been released as a double-A side single. The flip side of the record is a new mix of the band’s first single “Love Me Do”. This was first released in 1962. “Now and Then” will also be the final track on a new edition of the Beatles’ legendary greatest hits “blue” album. This is a collection of their classics from 1967-1970.
Beatles member Paul McCartney spoke to reporters about the new song. He said, “It’s quite emotional. And we all play on it. It’s a genuine Beatles recording.” He spoke about his excitement at being able to release a new song, saying, “In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music, and to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing.” McCartney was also excited about hearing John Lennon’s voice. He said it was “crystal clear”. Lennon was shot dead by a fan outside his New York home in 1980. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr said recording the song was, “the closest we’ll ever come to having [John Lennon] back in the room”. He said it was, “very emotional for all of us”.
1. What can be learned about “Now and Then”?| A．It was first released in 1962. |
| B．It was a song created by John Lennon in 1979. |
| C．The four Beatles didn’t actually record it together. |
| D．It was AI technology that helped to write the song. |
| A．Because the song was emotional. |
| B．Because he could play on a new song. |
| C．Because John Lennon came back in the room. |
| D．Because the band could release a new song that people hadn’t heard before. |
| A．The Beatles singer. | B．The Beatles engineer. |
| C．The Beatles drummer. | D．The Beatles manager. |
| A．A news website. | B．A travel blog. |
| C．A science fiction. | D．A nature magazine. |
The lion dance is a
Two dancers dress up as the lion. One dancer holds the large head of the brightly colored costume and the other dancer is the body. The dancers have to be very fit as they perform lots of moves. They dance to music
People will often hang the head of a lettuce (生菜) from ceilings or doorways. The lion will go in search
8 . One of the reasons why so many people listen to music during exercise is that it has a number of benefits. The research around the positive influences of music during exercise was reviewed in a paper in the February 2020 issue of Psychological Bulletin.
Probably the biggest influence of music on exercise, based on these findings, is that listening to music during exercise can make you feel better about what you have done. Experiments find that people feel more positive about the exercise when they have listened to music than when they have not. The impact of music didn’t depend on the intensity of the exercise, and the effect appeared for both trained and untrained athletes.
Music also seems to reduce people’s feeling of how much they are exerting themselves. That is, at the same level of intensity of activity, listening to music can make you feel like you are exerting less effort than you would feel without music. Some studies have also shown that when athletes are free to set their own exertion level, they are willing to exercise more intensely with music than without. For some people (particularly when they are early in their training), music helps them focus on the music rather than on pain.
Music also appears to have a small effect on performance overall. Athletes perform better both during exercise and while engaging in their sport when there is music. In the studies analyzed, fast music, with a tempo greater than 120 beats-per-minute, was more effective than slow music. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the athlete chooses the music or whether it is chosen by someone else. So, the playlists selected by the teachers of an exercise class you’re taking may work even if you don’t love all of the songs.
The one place where music doesn’t seem to have much of an impact is on physiological functioning. The heart rate of an athlete is not consistently affected by music.
1. What is the main benefit of listening to music during exercise?| A．Improving performance. |
| B．Providing entertainment. |
| C．Reducing the effort of training. |
| D．Feeling better about the workout. |
| A．Try hard. | B．Break down. | C．Growing up. | D．Come back. |
| A．Soft music. | B．Calm music. | C．Gentle music. | D．Rapid-paced music. |
| A．It consistently increases their heart rate. |
| B．It consistently decreases their heart rate. |
| C．It depends on the intensity of the exercise. |
| D．It has no consistent influence on their heart rate. |
1. Where are the speakers?
| A．At a store. | B．In a classroom. | C．At the man’s home. |
| A．Jazz music. | B．Rock music. | C．Country music. |
10 . You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It’s the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart, they will become more intelligent. A quick Internet search reveals (透露) plenty of products to help you in the task. Whatever your age there are CDs and books to help you taste the power of Mozart’s music, but when it comes to scientific evidence that it can make you more clever, the picture is more mixed.
The phrase “the Mozart effect” was made up in 1991, but it was a study described two years later in the journal Nature that sparked (引发) real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that sound reasonable. Mozart was undoubtedly a genius himself; his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, we’ll become more intelligent.
The idea took off, with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It was not just babies and children who were exposed to Mozart’s music on purpose, even an Italian farmer proudly explained that the cows were played Mozart three times a day to help them to produce better milk.
I’ll leave the debate on the effect on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent? More research was carried out but an analysis of sixteen different studies proved that listening to music does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to handle shapes mentally, but the benefits are short-lived and it doesn’t make us more intelligent.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 1?| A．Mozart composed many musical pieces for children. |
| B．Children listening to Mozart will be more intelligent. |
| C．There is little scientific evidence to support Mozart effect. |
| D．There are few products on the Internet about Mozart’s music. |
| A．the idea was accepted by many people | B．people were strongly against the idea |
| C．the US government helped support the idea | D．Mozart played an important part in people’s life |
| A．people will become more clever if they listen to Mozart’s music again and again |
| B．listening to Mozart’s music can bring us benefits constantly |
| C．we can get some benefits from listening to Mozart’s music |
| D．the author is positive about Mozart’s effect |
| A．To Be or Not to Be? | B．What Music Is Beneficial? |
| C．What Is the Mozart Effect? | D．Listening to Mozart, Necessary? |
