“What will we be singing for the contest this year?” a student from my high school choir, a singing team, asked eagerly.
I hesitated this moment. “I was thinking,” I said, “maybe we’ll skip the contest and just work hard on the concerts this year.”
“NO!” the kids protested.
“We’ve got to go to contest!”
“In Class A.”
“It’s tradition!”
This was true. Awards lined the front wall of the music room from the past successes of large, talented classes. But a change in educational policies, with an emphasis on academics, had reduced my choir to a mere thirty-two students. My section leaders had graduated or been forced to drop music classes, leaving me with young, inexperienced kids who couldn’t read music, couldn’t hold their parts, and could sing only a simple melody or song.
“Maybe we could enter Class B this year,” I suggested, knowing even that would be a near-impossible mission.
“No!” the kids screamed. “Class A!”
I shook my head, “Class A is extremely difficult.”
“We can do it!” they shouted. “We can do it!”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, hoping their enthusiasm would die off in a couple of weeks.
But that didn’t happen. If anything, the class became more fixed. Every day they begged and begged and they insisted. Because I had to protect their self-pride I couldn’t tell them they weren’t good enough. My efforts to prevent their eagerness, by showing them a difficult piece of music from the contest list, simply ended with, “It’s okay, Mrs. Pliszka, we’ll get it.”
I struggled to make a decision. If I destroyed their hope, would I destroy their spirit? On the other hand, if we entered Class A, would they be humiliated by the judges’ comments? Finally one morning I walked into class. “Kids!” I demanded. “We are entering the contest in Class A…” The rest of my sentence was lost in screams of delight and applause. As the weeks progressed, each morning the kids practised singing, worked on reading music, learned musical terms, practiced rhythm and marked changes, prepared concert music, and went over and over the three contest numbers.
注意:
1. 续写词数应为80左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
When the contest day finally arrived, the kids felt ready to take on the world!
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1.钦佩他的演奏;
2.提出互相学习。
注意:
1.写作词数应为80左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Novak,
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
3 . When Belquer first joined a team to make a better live music experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, he was struck by how they had developed workarounds to enjoy concerts. “What they were doing at the time was holding balloons to feel the vibrations (震动) through their fingers,” Belquer said. He thought the team could make something to help hard-of- hearing people enjoy live music even more with the technology now available.
Belquer, who is also a musician and theater artist, is now the “Chief Vibrational Officer” of Music: Not Impossible, which uses new technology to address social issues like poverty and disability access. His team started by tying vibrating different cell phone motors to bodies, but that didn’t quite work. The vibrations were all the same. Eventually, they worked with engineers to develop a light haptic (触觉的) suit with a total of 24 vibrating plates. There are 20 of them tied to a vest that fits tightly around the body like a hiking backpack, plus one that ties to each wrist and ankle. When you wear the suit, it’s surprising how it feels.
The vibrations are mixed by a haptic DJ who controls the location, frequency and intensity of feeling across the suits, just as a music DJ mixes sounds in an artful way. “What we’re doing is selecting and mixing what we want and send it to different parts of the body,” said the DJ. The haptic suits were just one component of the event. There were American Sign Language interpreters; the music was captioned on a screen on the stage.
The suits are the star attraction. Lily Lipman, who has auditory processing disorder, lit up when asked about her experience. “It’s cool, because I’m never quite sure if I’m hearing what other people are hearing, so it’s amazing to get the music in my body.”
1. What surprised Belquer about people with hearing problems?A.The way they enjoyed music. |
B.The attitude they held to life. |
C.The love they had for balloons. |
D.The frequency they vibrated fingers. |
A.The motors were the same. |
B.The vibrations lacked variety. |
C.The motors hardly worked. |
D.The vibrations were irregular. |
A.He interpreted the sign language. |
B.He captioned the music on stage. |
C.He selected suits for the attendees. |
D.He helped people feel the music. |
A.Comforting. | B.Challenging. | C.Satisfying. | D.Encouraging. |
4 . Alonzo Carter, also known as Zo, is currently a football coach for the San Jose State Spartans in California. He’s trained countless student athletes, which often means his previous job in the hip-hop industry goes unnoticed. But not always!
Back in 1989, he and a few of his college friends auditioned (试演) for a music video. The song? MC Hammer’s still-unknown classic, Let’s Get It Started. They were hired on the spot and soon went on tours with him! As the summer came to an end, Zo assumed he’d return to college to finish his degree and reclaim his spot on the football team, but MC Hammer gained great popularity and started taking over the airwaves. Zo had a huge decision to make and ultimately joined MC Hammer as a permanent (长期的) backup dancer! But Zo couldn’t shake his passion for football. He eventually left the group to return to his high school in Oakland, California, where he began coaching track and football.
Decades later, Zo is one of the most well-known and respected college football coaches and doesn’t call much attention to his hip-hop beginnings. But at a training practice in 2017, a familiar song started playing over the PA system (广播系统). It happened that the head coach Brent Brennan had caught wind of Zo’s past and wanted him to show off his moves.
Without missing a beat, Zo dived in and started doing the Hammer Dance he had helped create all those years before. The moves came to him as easily as they had done back in the day, and his players obviously couldn’t get enough of his impressive talent.
Zo is a good reminder of how surprising career paths can be. Just think what would have happened if he hadn’t gone to that audition! The Hammer Dance wouldn’t exist as we know it, which would be a real tragedy (悲剧).
1. What does Zo do now?A.He coaches a college football team. | B.He serves as head of backup dancer. |
C.He competes in track and field events. | D.He teaches high school students hip-hop. |
A.MC Hammer didn’t become famous until 1989. |
B.Zo and his friends didn’t perform well in the audition. |
C.Zo and his friends didn’t know much about Let’s Get It Started. |
D.MC Hammer wasn’t in favor of Zo’s decision to finish his degree. |
A.Had looked into. | B.Had reflected on. | C.Had talked about. | D.Had heard of. |
A.He thinks little of it. | B.He is doubtful about it. |
C.He is very proud of it. | D.He thinks it a best choice. |
On a chilly December morning in Beijing, Zhang Ting
Zhang joined a workshop
Soon afterward, she wrote the song Hong Yu in memory of Liang Hongyu, a respected heroine during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). “Images of these female roles came instantly to mind
The three-day activity brought together singer-songwriters from around the country and targeted new songs featuring elements of guo feng. Li Liang, head of the program, said, “Young people grow up with the Internet and are open
6 . A recent study from the University of California San Diego reveals that young children between the ages of 3 and 5 can improve their musical abilities, especially in understanding musical pitches (音高) , when learning Mandarin, compared to those who speak English.
This research challenges the idea that our mental abilities are entirely separate from each other. It suggests that the skills children learn in one area can influence their learning in another. This raises-questions about how our mental abilities relate to each other.
The study involved two experiments with similar groups of Mandarin and English learners, totaling 180 children. They were tested on tasks related to pitch (high or low notes)and timbre (音色) (the quality of sound). Both groups performed similarly on the task related to timbre. However, Mandarin speakers performed better than English speakers on tasks related to pitch.
Mandarin is a tonal language, which means the tone (音调) used when saying a word can change its meaning, not just add emphasis. For example, the Mandarin word “ma” can mean “mother,” “horse,” “hem (麻),” or “scold,” depending on how it’s spoken. This focus on pitch helps young Mandarin speakers understand musical pitches better. Since both language and music involve changes in pitch, the study aimed to find out if understanding pitch in language is different from understanding it in music. The results suggest that experience with understanding musical pitches can also help in understanding language pitches, and vice versa.
While learning Mandarin might offer an advantage due to its tonal nature, it’s important to note that the study doesn’t suggest replacing music lessons with language lessons or the other way around. Learning another language has many benefits, and music education remains important for musical skills.
In summary, this is an extremely valuable research, highlighting the connections between cognitive (认知的) skills and emphasizes the value of exposing children to different languages and providing them with musical education for their overall development.
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 1?A.To introduce the concept of musical pitches. |
B.To offer the research result to be discussed. |
C.To present the University of California San Diego. |
D.To share a fact about children’s language development. |
A.The benefits of musical education. | B.The difficulty of learning Mandarin. |
C.The separation of children’s skills. | D.The importance of speaking English. |
A.Tonal perception. | B.Language abilities. |
C.Musical performances. | D.Knowledge development. |
A.Improving mental health. | B.Replacing music education. |
C.Developing musical abilities. | D.Bettering timbre perception. |
A.Unclear. | B.Approving. | C.Doubtful. | D.Worried. |
7 . Starting in the mid-2010s, the success of streaming services like Spotify, Tencent and Apple Music led the music industry into a period of steady income growth. But the rise of streaming hasn’t just transformed the business of music; it has changed the music as well.
In 1972, the Temptations hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, winning three Grammys, with a seven-minute version of the song “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”. Before the Temptations sing a word, an instrumental introduction plays for more than four minutes. If the group were in the studio today, the title chorus (副歌) would most likely have been featured much earlier in the song. That’s because music streaming services pay artists based on the number of plays each month, and to count as a play, a user must listen to the song past the 30-second mark. If a song you’ve never heard before takes a long time to get to the hook (旋律最好的部分), there is a good chance that you may simply hit the button to go to the next song. To keep the “skip rate (跳过率)” as low as possible, musical artists are increasingly moving a song’s hook to that initial 30-second sweet spot.
Every track that is listened to for more than 30 seconds counts as a play, but whether a listener makes it all the way through a song helps to determine whether a streaming service like Spotify will recommend similar songs in the future. For a musician, getting a song on Spotify’s popular Today’s Top Hits playlist means real money. A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and the European Joint Research Centre found that songs on the list gained an average of 20 million streams, worth up to $163,000 in royalties (版税).
As a result, according to an analysis by blogger Michael Tauberg, the average length of hit songs has dropped by more than 30 seconds since 2000, when it was over four minutes. Nearly two-thirds of the songs that achieved the number one spot in the first half of 2021 were under three minutes long.
1. Why is the Temptations mentioned in paragraph 2?A.To explain what made a song special in the past. |
B.To show admiration for their musical achievements. |
C.To illustrate the structure of popular songs in the past. |
D.To introduce the changes in song structure brought about by streaming. |
A.The artists will receive higher royalties. |
B.The listeners are more likely to skip it. |
C.It will be recommended to more users. |
D.It will be more popular among listeners. |
A.Advance in music production technology. |
B.The change in listeners’ musical preference. |
C.The desire for higher streaming-based income. |
D.Increased competition among streaming platforms. |
A.How streaming changes the length of music. |
B.How streaming services produce hit songs. |
C.How streaming promotes the development of music. |
D.How streaming influences our preference for music. |
Lion dance is very popular in China. As a well-known folk activity
In the 1990s, high-pole lion dancing
9 . “It’s incredible. I never thought my dream would come true so soon,” Chinese ballet dancer Chun Wai Chan recalled the scene when he got the news that he was promoted to the principal dancer with New York City Ballet(NYCB), the company’s first Chinese and fourth Asian principal dancer in 74 years.
Born in Huizhou, Guangdong in 1992, Chan has become attached to dance since childhood. However, his parents preferred him to be a doctor or a lawyer in the future. The uncompromising boy then wrote a seven-page letter to his parents describing his resolution to study dance.
Thanks to the sincere letter, Chan finally gained the support of his family, and at the age of 12, he was admitted to Guangzhou Arts School, marking the start of his dream-seeking journey. Chan’s first turning point in life came at the age of 18, when he was a finalist in the 2010 Prix de Lausanne, which earned him a full scholarship to study with Houston Ballet II. Two years later, Chan joined Houston Ballet and became a principal in 2017. There, he gained a reputation as a confident and sensitive performer. In 2020, he appeared as a contestant on the Chinese television show Dance Smash, which gained him a large following.
Chan returned to New York last year, and was finally promoted to the principal dancer with the NYCB in May this year. He attributes his success to his passion, hard work, concentration, perseverance and the pursuit of excellence.
In China, Chan’s success has become a source of pride. News of his promotion to principal dancer was widely circulated, and he has been featured repeatedly in the Chinese media.
After performances, audience members sometimes tell Chan that they have never seen Asian dancers in leading roles. He has been moved to hear young dancers of color say his example has given them hope for their own careers. “I used to think I danced just for myself,” he said. “Now I’m dancing for my family, for the audience, for the whole dance community.”
1. What can we learn about Chan?A.He is the first Asian principal dancer. |
B.He is fond of dancing when he was young. |
C.His parents have supported him from the beginning. |
D.He gained the popularity in the 2010 Prix de Lausanne. |
A.Determined. | B.Careful. | C.Thoughtful. | D.Fearless. |
A.Generous and considerate. | B.Perseverant and talented. |
C.Warm-hearted and ambitious. | D.Passionate and devoted. |
A.Because he got a lot of praises from the audience. |
B.Because he had been promoted to principal dancer. |
C.Because he realized his dance inspired other dancers. |
D.Because he received persistent support from his family. |
10 . Tonal languages use pitch (音调) to distinguish words that otherwise might sound the same. In Mandarin, for instance, mă means horse whereas mã means mother. Nontonal languages like Spanish sometimes include pitch changes to suggest emotion, for example, but not to change a word’s meaning.
As a Mandarin speaker and musician, Jingxuan Liu wondered about the crossover (融合) between language and music. While studying at Duke University, Liu helped analyze the musical abilities of nearly half a million people from 203 countries. Her colleagues had launched an online game in which participants completed several musical tasks, including identifying matching melodies at different pitches and finding beat tracks that fit songs’ rhythms.
On average, native speakers of the 19 represented tonal languages were better at the melody task compared with speakers of 29 nontonal languages. And the effect wasn’t small a tonal first language strengthened melodic understanding by about half the amount that music lessons did, which was also surveyed. But tonal languages speakers tended to be worse at the rhythm task.
Humans must be choosy about what they pay attention to. Pitch patterns are quite important in tonal languages, which might explain the balancing act in music. “You’ve got a finite resource of attention, and you’ve got to divide up that somehow,” says study coauthor Courtney Hilton, a scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Prior research on language and music often compared just two tongues, usually English and Mandarin. But other cultural influences, such as Eastern and Western music styles, could have affected results. By examining a wide range of people, the new study included languages never estimated in this way and reached more generalizable conclusion.
“Our result here is showing that the language someone speaks which is an important part of culture — also shapes cognition,” Hilton says.
1. Why did Liu’s colleagues launch the online game?A.To attract more students to do the research. |
B.To learn about different people’s musical abilities. |
C.To confirm the role of music in people’s language learning. |
D.To find the difference between tonal languages and nontonal ones. |
A.Finding beat tracks. | B.Suggesting emotion. |
C.Distinguishing word meanings. | D.Figuring out matching melodies. |
A.Valued. | B.Limited. | C.Special. | D.Potential. |
A.Ground-breaking. | B.Brain-washing. | C.Inefficient. | D.Unreliable. |