【走向高考】2017版高考英语一轮复习 Module 5-6 The Conquest of the Universe amp; The Tang Poems练习 外研版选修8.docVIP

Module 5-6 Ⅰ.阅读理解 (2015·湖北黄冈模拟) Many people believe that teaching children music makes them smarter, better able to learn new things. But the organizers of a new study say theres no scientific evidence that early musical training affects the intelligence of young people. An estimated 80 percent of American adults think music lessons improve childrens ability to learn or their performance in school. They, say that the satisfaction for learning to play a new song helps a child express creativity. Researchers at Harvard University, however, have found that theres one thing musical training does not do. They say it does not make children more intelligent. Samuel Mehr is a graduate student at Harvards School of Education. He said it is wrong to think that learning to play a musical instrument improves a childs intellectual development. He says the evidence comes from studies that measured the mental ability of two groups of 4-year-olds and their parents. One group attended music class, the other went to a class that places importance on the visual arts—arts that can be seen. “The evidence there is ‘no’. We found no evidence for any advantage on any of these tests for the kids participating in these music classes，” said Mehr. Samuel Mehr says researchers have carried out many studies in an effort to learn whether musical training can make children smarter. He says the results have been mixed. He says only one study seems to show a small percentage increase in IQ, intellectual scores among students after one year of music lessons. He does not believe that IQ is a good measure of childs intelligence. He says researchers in his study compared how well children in the musical training group did on mental processing tasks or projects, then the results were compared to those of children who did not take lessons. There was no evidence that the musical training group did much better on the mental tasks than the other group. The researchers confirmed the results with a larger