Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony is learnt and not based on natural ability, a new study by University of Melbourne researchers has found. The researchers said previous theories about how we appreciate music were based on the physical functions of sound, the ear itself and a born ability to hear harmony. The study shows that musical harmony can be learnt, and it is a matter of training the brain to hear the sounds. So if you thought that the music of some foreign culture (or Jazz) sounded like the crying of cats, it's simply because you haven't learnt to listen by their rules. The researchers used 66 volunteers with a range of musical training and tested their ability to hear combinations of notes to determine if they found the combinations familiar or pleasing. They found that people needed to be familiar with combinations of notes. If they couldn't recognize the notes, they found the notes _ . This finding put an end to centuries of theories claiming that physical functions of the ear determine what we find attractive. The study found that trained musicians were much more sensitive to unpleasant notes than non-musicians. When they couldn't find the note, the musicians reported that the sounds were unpleasant, while non-musicians were much less sensitive. This shows the importance of training or nurturing the brain to like particular sound of combinations of notes, like those found in jazz or rock. Depending on their training, a strange chord sound was pleasant to some musicians, but very unpleasant to others. This showed us that even the ability to hear a musical note is learnt. To confirm this finding, they trained 19 non-musicians to find the notes of a random selection of western chords. Not only did the participants' ability to hear notes improve rapidly; the chords they had learnt sounded more pleasant--regardless of how the chords were played. The question of why some combinations of musical notes are heard as pleasant or unpleasant has long been debated. "... What is the best title for the passage? A) Improve Your Brain By Listening to Music B) You Can Be a Musician Without Being Trained C) Music Can't be Taught D) Love of Music Is Not Natural But Nurture
D
SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEKEND Captain Good Fellow Do you enjoy interesting stories ,funny games and exciting dances? Captain Good Fellow will be ready to teach all these things to children of all ages at the City Theatre on Saturday morning at,10:00,free. Walking Tour of the Town Forget your worries on Saturday morning.Take a beautiful walk and learn about the local history.Meet at the front entrance of City Hall at 9:30.Wear comfortable shoes! Films at the Museum Two European films will be shown Saturday afternoon at the Museum Theatre.See Broken Window at 1:30.The Workers will be at 3:45. For further information,call 4987898. International Picnic Are you tired of eating the same food every day? Come to Central Park on Saturday and enjoy food from all over the world.Delicious and inexpensive.From noon to 5:00 P.m. Take me out to the Ballgame It's October,and tonight is the last chance to see the Redbirds his year.Get your tickets at the gate.It might be cold....Don't forget sweaters and jackets. Do you want to hear "the Zoo"? "The Zoo",the popular rock group from Australia,will give their first U.S.concert tomorrow night at 8 at Rose Hall,City College. "The Zoo "is. A) a park with lots of animals B) the first concert from the U.S. C) a music group from Australia D) a popular rock band from Europe
C
Q: The brothers Grimm , Jacob and Wihelm are synonymous with fairytales. The stories they gathered have been read by millions of children in all countries over the last two hundred years. It's difficult to think that any children could not be attracted by a tale like Red Riding Hood ,which never seems to grow old. This year, Dec20 marked the 200thanniversary of publication of the tales. The Brimms collected the stories and gave them to the world because they wanted to show what German culture was about. In their time, Germany was not yet a nation; it was a collection of little states. Like many patriotic intellectuals ,they thought they could help people in German territories to understand their own traditions. Quite a few adult were shocked by brothers Grimm's work. They wrote about a wolf who eats a little girl's grandmother and an awful old woman who wants to put Hansel and Gretel in a stove. In fact, the original Grimm fairy tales are often far more unpleasant, and more adult in theme .There is a lot of cruelty too. In the wedding scene of Snow White ,the stepmother dances in red-hot iron shoes that kills her. However, other people came along and made these stories more "suitable" for children. The modern children's writer Philip Pullman recently published a book of his versions of some Grimm tales. He points out that the Grimms themselves changed the stories, but for the better. They knew how to hold the attention of readers. "A Grimm tale," he says, "moves with a dreamlike speed from event to event, pausing only to say as much as is needed and no more." So, when we read a story from Grimms' collection, we're getting something from old Germany, but our enjoyment is also thanks to the brothers' great storytelling skills. In which section of a paper is the passage taken from? A) Fun Times B) Comment C) Life and Style D) Culture.
A: D
When you turn on the radio, you hear an advertisement. When you watch television, you hear and see an advertisement. If you turn the pages of a newspaper or magazine, again you find an advertisement. If you walk down the street, you see one advertising board after another. All day, every day, people who want to sell you something compete to catch your attention. As a result, advertisements are almost everywhere. In the West, advertisements are the fuel that makes mass media work. Many TV stations, newspapers, magazines, radio stations are privately owned. The government does not give them money. So where does the money come from? From advertisements. Without advertisements, there would not be these private businesses. Have you ever asked yourself what advertising is? Through the years, people have given different answers to the question. For some time it was felt that advertising was a means of keeping your name before the public? and some people thought that advertising was "truth well told." Now more and more people describe it in this way: Advertising is the paid, non-personal, and usually persuasive description of goods, services and ideas by identified sponsors through various media. First, advertising is usually paid for. Various sponsors pay for the advertisements we see, read, and hear over the various media. Second, advertising is non-personal. It is not face to face communication. Although you may feel that a message in a certain advertisement is aimed directly at you, in reality, it is directed at large groups of people. Third, advertising is usually persuasive. Directly or indirectly it tells people to do something. All advertisements try to make people believe that the product, idea, or service advertised can do good to them. Fourth, the sponsor of the advertisement must be identified. From the advertisement, we can see if the sponsor is a company, or an organization, or an individual. Fifth, advertising reaches us through traditional and nontraditional mass media. Included in the traditional... The existence of the privately owned mass media depends financially on _ . A) the government B) their owners?families C) advertisements D) the audience
C