Unit2 Section Ⅲ Extended reading & Project & Assessment（作业）-2022-2023学年新教材高中英语选择性必修1【精讲精练】译林版

[限时检测] [限时30分钟] Ⅰ.阅读理解 A new study from MIT has found that piano lessons have a very specific effect on kindergartners' ability to distinguish different pitches (音高)，which translates into an improvement in distinguishing between spoken words.However，piano lessons did not appear to provide any benefit for overall intelligence，as measured by IQ，attention span (注意力集中时间)，and working memory. The 74 children participating in the study were divided into three groups：one that received 45­minute piano lessons three times a week；one that received extra reading instruction for the same period of time；and one that received neither of these.All children were 4 or 5 years old and spoke Mandarin as their native language. After six months，the researchers tested the children on their ability to distinguish words based on differences in vowels (元音)，consonants (辅音)，or tone (音调).Better word distinguishing usually comes with better phonological awareness—the awareness of the sound structure of words，which is a key part of learning to read. Children who had piano lessons showed a significant advantage over children in the extra reading group in distinguishing between words that differ by one consonant.Children in both the piano group and extra reading group performed better than the third group when it came to distinguishing words based on vowel differences. The researchers also used electroencephalography to measure brain activity and found that children in the piano group had stronger responses than the other children when they listened to a series of tones of different pitch.This suggested that a greater sensitivity to pitch differences is what helped the children who took piano lessons to better distinguish different words，Desimone says. “That's a big thing for kids in learning language：being able to hear the differences between words，” he says.“They really did benefit from that.” In tests of IQ，attention，and working memory，the researchers did not find any significant differences a