1 . Chinese traditional painting and dance are two vital parts of the art world. But what about when they meet each other?

This year, a dance drama titled Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting (《只此青绿》) was staged on CCTV’ Spring Festival Gala and went viral.

According to CCTV, this poetic dance programme was inspired by the about 900-year-old Chinese painting A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains(《千里江山图》). Created by Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng at the age of 18, the painting is amazing in its marvellous size, rich coloration and the expressive details, reported CCTV. It shows a Chinese blue-green landscape: mountains and groupings of infinite rise and fall between cloudless sky and rippling water.

When the dancers moved elegantly, audiences seemed to be looking at the moving mountains and rivers. “It brings me a pure experience of beauty. It is not only dance but also an ‘exhibition’. Vast mountains and rivers are coming to life!” An Internet user Mo Weisha wrote in a review, “About a thousand years later, green mountains and rivers still wow people as they did long ago.

Some people even decided to watch the dance again when it was staged in the theaters later. In fact, in recent years, more and more modern shows highlight Chinese traditional culture and have received warm welcome. As for why, it is due to people’s great love for traditional culture.

“The younger generations have grown up with a more open mindset. They embrace Chinese culture and are proud of it. ”Yao Wei, director of Henan TV Station’s Innovation Center, told China Daily.

1. What is the function of Paragraph 1 in the text?

A．To present a common phenomenon.	B．To compare painting with dance.
C．To describe the art world.	D．To introduce the topic.

2. What can we learn about the painting A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains from the text?

A．It was painted in several bright colors.

B．It shows natural beauty vividly.

C．It was created over thousand years ago.

D．It is of small size but includes great details.

3. Why are shows about Chinese traditional culture becoming popular according to Yao Wei?

A．People are more open to traditional culture.

B．People are happy to see new forms of art.

C．Chinese culture has been spreading around the world.

D．People have gained more access to traditional culture.

4. What could be the best title for the text?

A．Passion for Chinese Traditional Painting

B．Art Coming Alive Through Poetic Dance

C．Connection Between Painting and Dance

D．Highlights in Traditional Chinese Culture

2 . Adele’s new album, “30”, is finally available. Last month, hundreds of millions of us streamed its first single, “Easy On Me”. This song arouses feelings not easily put into words, but we can probably agree it is a sad song.     1    Yet sad music does pull us in and lift us up.

Let’s start with a biological theory. When we experience real-life loss, or empathize (产生共鸣) with another’s pain, certain hormones are released within us.     2    They do so by making us feel calmed and supported. Feeling Adele’s pain, or recalling our own, may cause such chemical changes within us.

    3    Feeling moved can come from us suddenly feeling closer to other people. Indeed, when we have listened to “30”, we may turn to reaction videos to see how others feel. This lets us share an emotional experience with others. And it boosts our feeling of being moved and triggers (激发) feelings of comfort and belonging.

We can also think at the spiritual level. Adele’s songs allow us to view the pleasure in terms of the meaning she helps us make. Adele takes hard life experiences and makes sense of them. This is what sad art does.     4    As philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once put it, someone who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.

Ultimately, we listen to Adele’s songs when we want to recall, reflect, or belong. They let us feel her sadness, share our suffering, and connect with others. To all of us, Adele’s songs say:     5    

A．You are not alone in your pain.

B．Life is meaningless without sad music.

C．These help us to deal with loss and pain.

D．Few people are aware sad music makes us feel good.

E．This may make us be tier prepared for when real loss strikes.

F．It takes the pain and suffering of the world and gives it meaning.

G．Psychologically, a key reason we enjoy sad songs is that they profoundly move us.

3 . Do you like Chinese traditional painting and dance? They are two important parts of the traditional Chinese art. But what about when they meet each other?

This year, a dance drama titled Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting (《只此青绿》) was staged on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala and became popular.

According to CCTV, this poetic dance program was inspired by the 900-year-old Chinese painting A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains (《千里江山图》), created by Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng at about 18. The painting is amazing in its sweeping size, rich coloration and the expressive details, reported by CCTV. It shows a Chinese blue-green landscape: mountains and groupings of infinite (无限的) rise and fall between cloudless sky and rippling (涟漪的) water.

When the dancers moved elegantly, audiences seemed to be looking at the moving mountains and rivers. “It brings me a pure experience of beauty. It is not only a drama but also an exhibition. Vast mountains and rivers are coming to life!” Internet user Mo Weisha wrote in a review. “More than a thousand years later, green mountains and rivers still impress people as they did long ago.” Some people even decided to watch the dance again when it was staged in the theaters later. In fact, in recent years, more and more modern shows have featured Chinese traditional culture and received warm welcome. As for the reason, it is due to people’s great love for traditional culture.

“The younger generations have grown up with a more open mind. They accept Chinese culture and are proud of it,” Yao Wei, director of Henan TV Station’s Innovation Center, told China Daily.

1. What’s the writing purpose of paragraph 1?

A．To raise a question.	B．To introduce the topic.
C．To describe the art world.	D．To show a doubtful thought.

2. What pushed the poetic dance?

A．CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala.	B．A Chinese blue-green landscape.
C．Song Dynasty painter Wang Ximeng.	D．An old Chinese traditional painting.

3. Why did this poetic dance enjoy welcome?

A．Traditional culture is accepted and loved by people.

B．Green mountains and rivers greatly impress people.

C．The poetic dance can be staged in the theaters later.

D．Increasing modern shows feature Chinese traditional culture.

4. What’s the main idea of the whole text?

A．It explains why Chinese art enjoys popularity.

B．It shows us art can come to life through dance.

C．It highlights the beauty of Chinese traditional art.

D．It tells us the love for Chinese traditional painting.

6 . Aesha Ash is a ballet dancer who began The Swan Dreams Project in 2011. It is a program designed to bring ballet to girls of color in her community. Aesha Ash is one of the few women of color to ever grace the stages of the School of American Ballet in New York City. She wants to expose her community to more positive images of women of color through the use of ballet. She wants to show the world that beauty and grace are not defined by status or race.

Aesha grew up in the inner city of Rochester, New York, where crime, gun violence and poverty were among the biggest threats to the community. For her, that’s normal. That’s just life in the neighborhood, but what she remembers most is the dance studio. She started dancing at the age of five. A teacher mentioned to her mother that she had some promise in ballet, and that it would be difficult for her, as a woman of color, to enter the ballet world. But the hardship she faced was the very thing that pushed her to pursue a career in ballet.

And there’s so much negative stereotypes (刻板印象) and misunderstanding of who they are in the media. Through the use of imagery and her career as a ballet dancer, she challenges stereotypes that exist for women of color, particularly those from inner-city communities.

“It’s important that our girls see that side of themselves because for many kids it’s hard to be what you can’t see. I hadn’t seen a black ballet dancer before I decided that was what I wanted to be. It was really important for me to be in my environment displaying that because this is where I’m from. It was always beyond ballet,” Aesha Ash stated.

1. Why did Aesha start The Swan Dreams Project?

A．To promote the images of females of color by ballet.

B．To expose her community to a world of women of color.

C．To grace the stages of the School of American Ballet.

D．To show the world that beauty and grace are defined by status.

2. Which of the following best describes the community she grew up in?

A．Comfortable.

B．Ancient.

C．Peaceful.

D．Unsafe.

3. What can’t we know from the passage?

A．Aesha had a gift for ballet according to her teacher.

B．The hardship Aesha faced was the color of her skin.

C．Acsha wanted to be a ballet dancer because of a woman dancer of color.

D．It is not easy to change the stereotypes that exist for women of color.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．A teacher provides chances for girls of color.	B．A woman brings ballet to the girls of color.
C．Ballet changes the life of a woman of color.	D．A woman has changed the negative stereotypes.

8 . Language plays an important role in our daily lives, no matter where we live in the world.     1     Both language and music play a huge role in our culture and here are some of their similarities.

◆Both language and music have a writing system.

In English we record language using the alphabet, which is a collection of letters. Similarly, we use notes to keep a record of music. Just as you are reading this collection of letters and find meaning in it, musicians read notes and create meaning in the form of music which we can hear.     2     I can read or hear the ideas of someone who lived hundreds of years ago, which is really quite exciting.

◆    3    

You can make a good guess at where someone is from by listening to the language they use. In the same way, we know that styles of music are different around the world, giving us the opportunity to explore many different cultures through their music and providing us with music for every situation.

◆Both share feelings.

    4     Similarly, music can sound angry, sad or happy. Music can show you exactly how the composer was or is feeling, and allows us to share that feeling. When you feel happy, you may want to sing and dance to a happy song to celebrate your happiness.     5    

A．Both influence culture.

B．Both vary with culture.

C．This also means that there is something for everyone.

D．You can know that I am angry through my words.

E．Similarly, music is a part of many people’s lives.

F．In contrast, you probably want to listen to sad music when you are feeling down.

G．By reading pieces of text or music, we are able to share experiences through time.

9 . From Mozart to pop music, tons of people enjoy listening to different types of music while they paint, write or draw. Many believe that music helps improve creativity. But an international study by a group of psychologists is challenging that viewpoint.     1    

To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal (文字的) problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room.     2     They found that background music significantly hurt the participants’ ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity.

The tasks were simple word games.     3     Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or while exposed to three different types of music: music with unfamiliar lines, instrumental music, or music with familiar lines.

Dr. Melatchie and his colleagues conclude that music interferes with (干扰) the verbal working memory of the brain.     4     However, some may argue that the library background noises have seemingly no effect. The researchers explain that is because library noises create an environment of steady state that doesn’t interrupt concentration.

“    5     Instead, they demonstrate that music, regardless of the presence of its content, consistently interrupts creative performance in insight problem solving,” the study reads.

A．And this in turn holds back creativity.

B．It has something to do with the positive reaction.

C．They say that their findings indicate music actually blocks creativity.

D．Then again, they were tested while music was played in the background.

E．Before the experiment, the participants didn’t study the music they would listen.

F．For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower.

G．To conclude, the findings here challenge the popular view that music builds up creativity.

10 . Some people like to listen to the Beatles, while others prefer Gregorian chants. When it comes to music, scientists find that nurture (培养) can overpower nature.

A study shows musical preferences seem to be mainly shaped by a person’s cultural upbringing and experiences rather than biological factors. “Our results show that there is a profound cultural difference in the way people respond to consonant (和谐的) and dissonant (不和谐的) sounds, and this suggests that other cultures hear the world differently,” says Josh McDermott, a scientist in Cambridge.

Some scientists believe that the way people respond to music has a biological basis and that this would overpower any cultural shaping of musical preferences, effectively making them a universal phenomenon. Some musicians, by contrast, think that such preferences are more a product of one’s culture. If a person’s upbringing shapes their preferences, then they are not a universal phenomenon.

The trick to working out where musical preferences come from was to find and test people who hadn’t had much contact with Western music. McDermott and his team travelled by aeroplane, car and canoe (独木舟) to reach the remote villages of the Tsimane people, who are largely isolated from Western culture.

In their experiments, McDermott and his colleagues investigated responses to Western music by playing combinations of notes to three groups of people: the Tsimane and two other groups of Bolivians that had experienced increasing levels of exposure to Western music. The researchers recorded whether each group regarded the notes as pleasant or unpleasant.

The Tsimane are just as good at making acoustic (声响的) distinctions as the groups with more experience of other types of music, the scientists find. Most people prefer consonant tones, but the Tsimane have no preference between them. “This pretty convincingly rules out that the preferences are things we’re born with,” McDermott argues.

“Culture plays a role. We like the music we grew up with,” agrees Dale Purves, a scientist at Duke University. “Nature versus nurture is always a fool’s errand. It’s almost always a combination,” he adds.

1. Why does the author mention Beatles in the first paragraph?

A．To compare people’s preferences for music.

B．To stress the importance of music.

C．To introduce the topic to be discussed.

D．To encourage readers to listen to their music.

2. McDermott would most probably agree that ________.

A．people’s music preference is a universal phenomenon

B．Chinese and Japanese have different music preferences

C．the way people respond to music is biologically decided

D．parents have nothing to do with children’s music preference

3. What do we know about the Tsimane in the experiment?

A．They prefer consonant tones.

B．They are born with excellent music talent.

C．They do well in telling acoustic distinctions.

D．They have never had contact with Western music.

4. What does the underlined phrase “a fool’s errand” in the last paragraph refer to?

A．Something meaningless.	B．Something significant.
C．Something reliable.	D．Something sensitive.