1. When was Now and Then recorded by Lennon?
| A．In 1970. | B．In 1977. | C．In 1979. |
| A．The use of advanced technology. | B．The living will of Lennon. | C．The request of fans. |
| A．It consists of classics. |
| B．It was finished in 1967. |
| C．It doesn’t include Now and Then. |
| A．It would make their album a hit. |
| B．It allowed the members to get together. |
| C．It offered a chance to remember Lennon. |
2 . It is universally believed that playing an instrument or singing in a choir may boost your brain. Generations of parents have told their children to practice their musical instruments. Parents have good reason to keep on top of their children’s musical education, since learning an instrument is not only associated with better educational achievement but also cognition (认知) and even intelligence scores in children. But does this musicality contribute to better cognition later in life?
A new study in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry investigated this question by asking middle-aged and older people to complete a questionnaire on their lifetime musical experience before completing cognitive tests. The results showed that musical people had better memory and ability to stay focused on tasks and plans than those with less or no musicality.
But how about being musical without playing an instrument? According to the study findings, singing can result in better executive (决策的) function but not memory, suggesting that playing an instrument has additional brain health benefits. Why singing would help us with our executive function is not clear and requires further investigation. However, singing has a strong social benefit when done in choirs, and there is good evidence that being involved in social activity is good for our brain health.
Playing an instrument or singing seems to have benefits to our brain health in ageing, according to the study. What is yet to be established is whether this would also help prevent future cognitive decline (下降) or dementia. The study provides no evidence for this yet and it is also not clear how the findings apply to the general population, since most people in the study were female, well-educated and well-off.
1. What does the new study center on?| A．The cognition improvement by singing in a choir. |
| B．Musical people’s ability of keeping focused on tasks. |
| C．Academic progress of children playing an instrument. |
| D．Musicality’s effect upon better cognition later in life. |
| A．Catherine who sings in a choir. | B．Sam who was born in a music family. |
| C．Mary who played the piano for years. | D．Jack who is eager to get music education. |
| A．Proved. | B．Started. | C．Announced. | D．Admitted. |
| A．Objective. | B．Opposed. | C．Unclear. | D．Supportive. |
3 . I remember that it was a fall morning when the orchestra (管弦乐队) teachers came into Miss Newell’s third-grade classroom. “You have hands for the viola (中提琴),” Miss Ciano told me. I was excited because my hands were finally good for something. I told my parents I wanted to play, and naturally, they agreed.
Since I first touched the viola, I haven’t been able to put it down. Ignoring the difficulty, I am pulled closer to it each day.
Classical music is truly my best friend. It is the trusted friend of every man, woman and child. Various feelings are expressed in classical music. I discovered that when I was eleven and played a cello concerto (大提琴协奏曲) of Bach in a competition, the first movement was joyful, but the second movement was mysterious and full of pain. From the piece, I learned that music expresses not only feelings, but also sudden mood changes. By listening to classical music, I know that someone else shares these feelings. Since I am lucky enough to be able to play classical music, I am comforted by it when I am upset. It gives me a way to escape from my problems for a short period. Classical music can express my joy, sadness and anger.
Now look back at that fall day in the third grade and think how gullible I was for believing that anyone, even music teachers, could tell whether hands were perfect for a certain instrument. I’m certain they told me I had “viola hands” not because they were fortune-tellers, but because there was a lack of violists in our district. Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it will become your friend for life.
1. What’s the main cause of the author’s interest in playing the viola?| A．Interesting musical classes. | B．Beautiful viola sound. |
| C．Teachers’ proper guidance. | D．Parents’ strong support. |
| A．By developing social skills. | B．By giving emotional comfort. |
| C．By broadening life experience. | D．By building close relationship. |
| A．Easily tricked. | B．Firmly loved. | C．Greatly challenged. | D．Secretly hidden. |
| A．Special Event, Sweet Memory. | B．Classical Music, Endless Friendship. |
| C．Lifetime Dream, Great effort. | D．Happy Childhood, Unforgotten Experience. |
1. What does the woman think of drums?
| A．They are loud. | B．They are exciting. | C．They are boring. |
| A．When he is famous. |
| B．Once he gets good at drums. |
| C．After he has enough money. |
What would life like without music? I wonder how music started and when we first become interested in music. Music is a essential part of my day. It changes my feelings and put me in a good mood. There’s nothing good to do on a train or bus than put on my headphones to listen to my favorite music. I like all types of music, from classical music and opera for jazz and rock. I’m always looking for something that sounds amazed. Sometimes I hear a song or some music on the radio or on TV I enjoy it very much. I always use my pockets money to pay online to download and saving the music.
6 . It is thought that music can make maths more enjoyable, keep students engaged and help ease fear or anxiety they have about maths.
To find out more, Turkish researcher Dr Ayca Akin, from the Department of Software Engineering, Antalya Belek University, searched academic databases for research on the topic published between 1975 and 2022. She then combined the results of 55 studies from around the world, involving almost 78,000 young people from kindergarten pupils to university students, to come up with an answer.
Students took maths tests before and after taking part in the intervention and the change in their scores was compared with that of youngsters who didn’t take part in an intervention. The use of music, whether in separate lessons or as part of maths classes, was associated with greater improvement in maths over time. The integrated lessons had the biggest effect, with around 73% of students who had integrated lessons doing significantly better than youngsters who didn’t have any type of musical intervention. Some 69% of students who learned how to play instruments and 58% of students who had normal music lessons improved more than pupils with no musical intervention.
The results also indicate that music helps more with learning arithmetic (算术) than other types of maths and has a bigger impact on younger pupils and those learning more basic mathematical concepts. Dr Akin point s out that maths and music have much in common, such as the use of symmetry symbols. Both subjects also require abstract thought and quantitative reasoning.
Limitations of the analysis include the relatively small number of studies available for inclusion. This meant it wasn’t possible to look at the effect of factors such as gender, socio-economic status and length of musical instruction on the results.
Dr Akin adds, “Encouraging mathematics and music teachers to plan lessons together could help ease students’ anxiety about mathematics, while also boosting achievement.”
1. How did Dr Akin conduct her research?| A．By launching a questionnaire online. | B．By creating a data model. |
| C．By analyzing data worldwide. | D．By surveying university students. |
| A．Take maths tests. | B．Develop abstract thought. |
| C．Plan lessons with music teachers. | D．Learn more basic mathematical concepts. |
| A．Music has some similarities with mathematics. | B．Music can help students learn mathematical models. |
| C．Music is involved in mathematical calculation. | D．Music comes from mathematics. |
| A．Overall. | B．Sensitive. | C．Subjective. | D．Imperfect. |
7 . In a world of music streaming services, access to almost any song is just a few clicks away. Yet, the live performance lives on. People still fill sweaty basements, muddy fields and gilded concert halls to hear their favourite musicians play. And now neuroscientists might know why—live music engages the brain’s emotion centres more than its recorded counterpart.
Concerts are immersive (沉浸式的) social experiences in which people listen to and feel the music together through crescendos, key changes and rhythmic drops. Moreover, they are dynamic — artists can adapt their playing according to the crowd’s reaction.
It was this last difference that led neuroscientists, based at the Universities of Zurich and Oslo, to study the brain responses of people listening to music. In the “live” experiment, participants lay in an MRI scanner listening to the music through earphones, while a pianist was positioned outside the room. The pianist was shown the participant’s real-time brain activity as a form of feedback. In the recorded condition, participants listened to pre-recorded versions of the same tunes.
The scientists were interested in how live music affected the areas of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly the amygdala, an area deep inside the brain. The results, just published in the journal PNAS, revealed that live music had a significantly greater emotional impact. Whether the music conveyed happiness or sadness, dynamic live performances led to increased activity not only in the amygdala but also other parts of the brain’s emotion processing network. The researchers also found that participants’ brain activity tracked the acoustic (声学的) features of the music, like tempo and pitch, far more closely when it was played live.
While the study didn’t fully recreate the live concert experience, the findings suggest that artists’ ability to adjust their performance in real time contributes to the emotional resonance (共鸣) of live music. Some musical acts now attempt to recreate live concerts, such as ABBA Voyage, an immersive pre-recorded VR concert, but without artists’ capacity to read audience’s mood and respond accordingly, it will never quite match the real thing.
1. Why do people attend live shows despite music streaming services?| A．Because they prefer being with friends at a concert. |
| B．Because they enjoy the process of finding popular music. |
| C．Because they intend to meet their favorite musicians in person. |
| D．Because they value the emotional connection live music brings. |
| A．observe the participants’ brain activity as feedback |
| B．compare the effectiveness of live performances and recorded ones |
| C．provide live accompaniment to participants inside the MRI scanner |
| D．demonstrate their ability to read and respond to the audience’s mood |
| A．Live music affected only the amygdala of the brain. |
| B．The brain responded more intensely to acoustic features of live music. |
| C．Live music had a reduced emotional impact compared to recorded music. |
| D．The participants’ brain activity was especially sensitive to dynamic music. |
| A．It fails to create a perfect performing atmosphere. |
| B．It matches the sound quality of live performances. |
| C．It greatly stirs up the audience’s emotional response. |
| D．It lacks artists’ response based on audience’s feedback. |
A concert
Ancient Chinese musical instruments
The concert, co-initiated by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and co-organized by Chinese Musicians’ Association and Brazil China Friendship Association, invited
This event was part of 2024 “China Today” Arts Week that was first launched in 2004 by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. During the past two decades, the art festival
1. To whom does the speaker give this talk?
| A．Singers. | B．Students. | C．Teachers. |
| A．Protect their voice from hurt. |
| B．Consider how strong their ambition is. |
| C．Take advantage of opportunities to perform. |
| A．To show a different path for singers. |
| B．To let singers value their good voices. |
| C．To encourage singers to get over anxiety. |
| A．She avoids singing in the studio. |
| B．She is extremely nervous on stage. |
| C．She prepares in her car before recording. |
10 . The ability of music to evoke (唤起) specific, often powerful feelings is no secret to anyone who has listened to Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No.5”, Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”, the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated”, Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” or any of the other countless compositions that have found their way onto Western playlists in the past few centuries.
The emotional effects of music are the point, of course. They are also the subject of a fast-growing field of research around the world in which scientists are exploring the nature of the many “subjective experiences” — such as joy, sadness, anxiety and calmness — that music evokes.
In a recent set of experiments, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues sought to determine if the feelings that people experience when listening to music “show evidence of universality”. They compared and analyzed how more than 2,800 U. S. and Chinese study participants responded to 2,168 (mostly Western) samples of instrumental music. The team identified 13 distinct and very specific feelings that the Chinese and U. S. subjects shared when listening to music, despite their cultural differences.
The music used in the research, described in the paper as “the richest set of Western music samples ever studied,” included classical, pop, rock, indie, hip-hop, R&B, country, film soundtracks, and more. An additional 189 sample of traditional Chinese music was also used. In all, the researchers gathered 375,230 judgments of the samples from the study participants.
In the first experiment, subjects listened to Western music samples (each of which was just five seconds long) and reported on the specific feelings they evoked, choosing responses from a list of 28 “categories of subjective experience” provided by the researchers. Terms on the list included “victorious/heroic”, “sad/depressing”, “joyful/cheerful”, “awe-inspiring/amazing” and “dreamy”. The team then used data-driven statistical modeling to identify the 13 shared experiences. The second experiment, which included the Chinese music, involved broad evaluations of the samples by participants—such as whether the subjects liked or disliked them or found them exciting or not. A central finding of the study, the researchers write, is that specific feelings “drive the experience of music” more than the broader features.
1. Why does the author mention these songs in the first paragraph?| A．Because they all have strong musical emotional effects. |
| B．Because their loop playback rates are very high. |
| C．Because they have all become world-renowned songs. |
| D．Because they have won countless awards. |
| A．Music can directly express people’s true emotions. |
| B．Music should have a variety of styles. |
| C．Music will easily ease people’s various emotions. |
| D．Music can produce significant emotional effects. |
| A．People’s taste in music. |
| B．Differences in Chinese and Western Music. |
| C．The universal feelings of different music. |
| D．The great influence of music on people. |
| A．In the first experiment, people shared their experiences with each other. |
| B．In the first experiment, people chose how they felt from a list provided by the researchers. |
| C．In the second experiment, people need to write down the types of songs. |
| D．In the second experiment, people need to sing the songs. |
