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第十篇 How Deafness MakesIt Easier to Hear

Most people think of Beethoven?s hearing loss asan obstacle to composing music. However, he produced his most powerful works inthe last decade of his life when he was completely deaf.

This is one of the most glorious cases of thetriumph of will over adversity1, but his biographer, MaynardSolomon, takes a different view. ____1F____. In his deaf world Beethoven couldexperiment, free from the sounds of the outside world, free to create new formsand harmonies.

Hearing loss does not seem to affect the musicalability of musicians who become deaf. They continue to “hear” music with asmuch, or greater, accuracy than if they were actually hearing it being played.

____2__D__. He described a fascinating phenomenonthat happened within three months: “my former musical experiences began to playback to me. I couldn?t differentiate between what I heard and real hearing.2After many years, it is still rewarding to listen to these play backs, to ?hear? music which is new to me and to find many quiet accompaniments for all ofmy moods. ”

How is it that the world we see，touch，hear，and smell isboth “out there” and at the same time withinus? There is no better example of this connection between external stimulus andinternal perception than the cochlear implant3. ____3_A___. However,it might be possible to use the brain?s remarkable power to make sense of theelectrical signals the implant produces.

When Michael Edgar first “switched on” hiscochlear implant, the sounds he heard were not at all clear. Gradually, withmuch hard work, he began to identify everyday sounds. For example, “The insistentringing of the telephone became clear almost at once.”

The primary purpose of the implant is to allowcommunication with others. When people spoke to Eagar, he heard their voices “comingthrough like a long-distance telephone call on a poor connection.” But when itcame to his beloved music, the implant was of no help.4 ____4__B__.He said, “I play the piano as I used to and hear it in my head at the sametime. The movement of my fingers and the feel of the keys give added ? clarity?to hearing in my head.5”

Cochlear implants allow the deaf to hear again ina way that is not perfect，but which can change their lives. ____5_C___. Even the most amazingcochlear implants would have been useless to Beethoven as he composed his NinthSymphony at the end of his life.

练习：

A No man-made device could replace the ability to hear.

B When he wanted to appreciate music, Eagar played the piano.

C Still, as Michael Eagar discovered, when it comes to musicalharmonies, hearing is irrelevant.

D Michael Eagar, who died in 2003,became deaf at the age of 21.

E Beethoven produced his most wonderful works after he became deaf. F Solomon argues that Beethoven?s deafness “heightened” hisachievement as a composer.

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第四篇

The Bilingual Brain

When Karl Kim immigrated to the United States from Korea?s a teenager, he had a hard time learning English. Now he speaks it fluently, and he had a unique opportunity to see how our brains adapt to a second language.1 As a graduate student, Kim worked in the lab of Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist in New York. ____1__F They found evidence that children and adults don?t use the same parts of the brain when they learn a second language.

The researchers used an instrument called an MRI2 (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner to study the brains of two groups of bilingual people. ____2_B___. The other consisted of people who， like Kim，learned their second language later in life. People from both groups were placed inside the MRI scanner. This allowed Kim and Hirsch to see which parts of the brain were getting more blood and were more active. They asked people from both groups to think about what they had done the day before, first in one language and then the other. They couldn?t speak out loud because any movement would disrupt the scanning.

Kim and Hirsch looked specifically at two language centers in the brain - Broca's area3, which is believed to control speech production, and Wernicke?s area3, which is thought to process meaning. Kim and Hirsch found that both groups of people used the same part of Wernicke's area no matter what language they were speaking. ____3__A__

People who learned a second language as children used the same region in Broca?s area for both their first and second languages. People who learned a second language later in life used a different part of Broca?s area for their second language. ____4__C__ Hirsch believes that when language is first being programmed in young children, their brains may mix the sounds and structures of all languages in the same area. Once that programming is complete, the processing of a new language must be taken over by a different part of the brain.

A second possibility is simply that we may acquire languages differently as children than we do as adults. Hirsch thinks that mothers teach a baby to speak by using different methods involving touch, sound, and sight. ____5_E___ A But their use of Broca?s area was different.

B One group consisted of those who had learned a second language as children. C How does Hirsch explain this difference?

D We use special parts of the brain for language learning.

E And that is very different from learning a language in a high school or college class. F Their work led to an important discovery.

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