VOA标准英语2014--音乐帮助贫穷儿童在学校表现的更好

 Music Helps Impoverished¹ Children Perform Better in School 音乐帮助贫穷儿童在学校表现的更好

LOS ANGELES— 

Researchers have found that the brains of children who grow up in poverty process sounds differently from children who are better off.  But a study shows musical training can tune² the brain so that these children of poverty can better process what they hear.

Karina Reyes, 16,  fell in love when she saw the trombone.

“I guess it’s the sound and the feel and how it looked, and it was not ordinary for a girl to play trombone," she said.

For the last five years, Reyes has been attending a free music program called Harmony Project.  Program founder³ Margaret Martin says the original aim of the program was to help children in poor, often violent, neighborhoods stay out of trouble by staying in school and graduating high school.  But there also was an unexpected result.

“Since 2008, 93 percent of our high school seniors have graduated in four years and have gone to colleges like Dartmouth, Tulane, NYU," said Martin.

Martin says some of the students also pursue highly technical degrees.

“Neuroscience pre-med, civil engineering, medical engineering, cultural anthropology⁴, we even have a Fulbright scholar. It didn’t make any sense," she said.

It did not make sense until researchers put sensors⁵ on the children's heads and measured how they responded to sounds, before and after they learned music at Harmony Project. Northwestern University neuroscientist Nina Kraus says they found that poor children process sound differently from their more affluent⁶ counterparts.  

“We found that the neuro signature for poverty was that the children were processing the details of sounds less precisely," she said.

But when they start learning music, something changes after two years.

“So we were able to determine that the children who took part in music lessons had nervous systems that responded to speech sounds in a more precise manner," she said. "There was a dosage effect so the children who spent more hours engaged in music classes were the children who showed the largest gains."

Kraus says her study with Harmony Project only looked at a small pool of students.

“We’re really just talking about 100 here, 100 there; these are relatively⁷ small scale studies," she said.

She'd like other researchers to expand the study to thousands of students in multiple locations.  But many of the young musicians at Harmony Project, like Ivan Ignacio Arce, say they are living proof that music helps them improve academically.

“After the Harmony Project, I get a new understanding, going to class participating, having an open mind, discussions, talking to my teacher, interacting," said Arce.

Karina Reyes says she also sees a connection between music and academics.

“Math is like kind of easier [be] cause of rhythms; it’s easier to count, easier to calculate. Yeah, I have seen some improvements with music," she said.

For Reyes and the other students here, they’re not playing just to do better in school, they’re here because of the love of their instruments and the friendships formed through music.

1 impoverished   

adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化

参考例句：

• the impoverished areas of the city 这个城市的贫民区
• They were impoverished by a prolonged spell of unemployment. 他们因长期失业而一贫如洗。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

3 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

4 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

5 sensors   

n.传感器，灵敏元件( sensor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There were more than 2000 sensors here. 这里装有两千多个灵敏元件。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Significant changes have been noted where sensors were exposed to trichloride. 当传感器暴露在三氯化物中时，有很大变化。 来自辞典例句

6 affluent   

adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的

参考例句：

• He hails from an affluent background.他出身于一个富有的家庭。
• His parents were very affluent.他的父母很富裕。

7 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。