新思维职业英语综合教程 3 New Thinking Vocational EnglishUnit Eight.ppt

Intensive Reading Warm-up Exercises II. Discuss the following questions with your partners. 1. What is your favorite instrument? 2. How to play it? III. Describe an instrument to your partners and ask them to guess what instrument it is. Your description should be brief and clear. Sample: It is a large musical instrument. People play it by pressing the black and white keys on the keyboard. The sound is produced by small hammers hitting the metal strings inside the instrument. Answer: Piano. Intensive Reading 1 One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not value me as a musician. I remember my mother’s reaction when I announced my decision to study music instead of medicine: “You’re wasting your SAT scores!” My parents love music, but at that time they were unclear about its value. 2 The confusion is understandable: We put music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper. But music often has little to do with entertainment. Quite the opposite. Structure Vocabulary Notes Why Music Matters Intensive Reading 3 The ancient Greeks had a fascinating way of articulating how music works. In their quadrivium—geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music—astronomy and music are two sides of the same coin. Astronomy describes relationships between observable, external, permanent objects. Music illuminates relationships between invisible, internal, transient objects. I imagine us having internal planets, constellations of complicated thoughts and feelings. Music finds the invisible pieces inside our hearts and souls and helps describe the position of things inside us, like a telescope that looks in rather than out. Structure Vocabulary Notes Why Music Matters Intensive Reading Structure Vocabulary Notes 4 In June 1940, French composer Olivier Messiaen was captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner of war camp. There, he finished a quartet for piano, cello, viol