Learning Through Music

By James Black

We are all by nature musical, rhythmical people. We listen to our mother's heartbeat for nine months before we are born and come into the world with our own rhythms of breathing and pulse. We are surrounded by music every day, enjoy it for relaxation, and may dance to it, yet many of us have not experienced music in our school lives beyond learning the alphabet through singing it. And many others have only experienced music in school during a weekly forty-five minute class period. Recent research reported at the 1994 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association suggests that music lessons, and even simply listening to music, can enhance spatial reasoning performance. The studies of Rauscher and Shaw confirm an unmistakable causal link between music and spatial intelligence. They note that "well-developed spatial intelligence is the ability to perceive the visual world accurately, to form mental images of physical objects, and to recognize variations of objects. The researchers theorize that spatial reasoning abilities are crucial for such higher brain functions as music, complex mathematics, and chess. As many of the problems in which scientists and engineers engage in cannot be described in verbal form, progress in science may, in fact, be closely linked to the development of certain spatial skills." It is interesting to note in this context that the majority of the best engineers and technical designers in Silicon Valley are practicing musicians. Numbers of theorists suggest that the fact that the universities of India graduate so many brilliant mathematicians and physicists has something to do with the early (even prenatal) listening to ragas--music with complex rhythmical and tonal patterns. Eric Oddleifson reports that a renowned Japanese master mathematics teacher, whose nearly two million students have demonstrated incredible math ability beyond their years, was asked the following question. "What would you say is the most effective way of heightening children's mental ability at the earliest possible stages?" He answered, "The finest start for infants is to sing songs. This helps to elevate their powers of understanding.

I.   Вставте пропущені букви у словах першого абзацу.

II. Виберіть та вставте запропоновані у дужках слова

III. В третьому абзаці підкресліть правильну граматичну форму.

IV. Складіть план до тексту.

V. Поставте 10 запитань до тексту.

VI. Напишіть анотацію.

From The Daily Telegraph 11.10.2009

Top List of Best Songs

By William Swan

Any song is eligible for this list, but this list mostly consists of rock and roll. A list that greatly influenced my list is Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs list (I have every song on my iPod). I don't quite agree with their selections, however, which are mostly from the '50s and '60s and aren't exactly timeless. What I'm getting at is that a teenager who has never heard those songs before won't like them. As you undoubtedly know, music today (for the most part) sucks. This stems from the fact that music hasn't progressed at all since the Beatles. How do I know this? Because when I was 15 I heard the Beatles' 1 CD, consisting of music made four decades ago, for the first time and absolutely loved it. Their music is entirely listenable because it isn't really different than the music I was used to. It was just better. Therefore I like to say that my list consists of music "Beatles and beyond." There are a few here and there from before 1963, but not many. This list would be more appropriately titled the "100 most timeless songs of all time" since almost every song was made before I was born. I have no idea how the world took in "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes in 1963 because I wasn't around, but №22 on Rolling Stone's list? People will always say "you can't know how great a song is unless you were there," but I think it is a greater testament to a song's value if it can stand the test of time to have the same effect on a teenager in 2006 as it had on a teenager in 1976.

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II. Виберіть та вставте запропоновані у дужках слова

III. В третьому абзаці підкресліть правильну граматичну форму.

IV. Складіть план до тексту.

V. Поставте 10 запитань до тексту.

VI. Напишіть анотацію.

Спеціальність: Образотворче мистецтво

From The Mirror 30. 06. 2009