Read first and then discuss the questions.

　　Where did jazz originate? What musical, social, and cultural ingredients (n. 成分, 因素) combined to form jazz? These questions, and their respective answers, are important for the student of jazz history to investigate.

　　Jazz is the only indigenous American art form and it is truly a cultural product of the United States. Western and African musical culture were the seeds of jazz, but America was the soil where jazz grew and prospered (V．成功, 兴隆, 昌盛). Jazz is neither a music of Blacks nor the music of Whites, but jazz is actually a blending of a variety of traditions, heritages, and philosophies (n. 哲学, 哲学体系) .

　　During the early history of America, slavery was a standard social practice. Slaves were forcibly brought from Africa to America. While in America, the displaced African’s (including African musicians who brought their musical traditions and talents with them) would learn from already established Western musical theories and performance practices. At the same time, Western musicians would learn African (Eastern) musical theories and performance practices from the African musicians.

　　Primitive (原始的) African culture places a great emphasis on music, much more so than Western societies. Music is an important aspect (n. 方面) of many of the day-today activities of the primitive African societies. As a primitive musical expression, early African music placed a great emphasis on rhythmic (adj. 节奏的, 合拍的) activity with a more simple use of melody (n. 悦耳的音调) and harmony (n. 协调, 融洽). African rhythms are quite complex and very advanced, yet the melodies and harmonies are simple. This strong emphasis on musical tradition and usage was brought with the African populations during their forced exile of slavery to America.

　　While in America, these new Black Americans still expressed themselves through their musical traditions. Since they were in America, their old musical traditions could not be reproduced exactly for many reasons, including not being allowed to use traditional African instruments. To understand a comparable situation, let us assume (vt. 假定, 设想) that we have a fictional American rock band who are forcibly taken to a foreign country. While in slavery, the rock musicians still desire to create their music. Unfortunately, their new “owners” give them permission to perform their rock music, but the rock band is not allowed to use any electric guitars, an electric bass, a drum set, keyboards, or any type of electronic instruments. This would cause quite a problem for the rock band, but if they have a strong enough desire to create their music, they would have to find a way to do so with the resources (instruments etc. ) that were available to them. This imaginary (adj. 假想的, 想象的) scenario (剧情概要, 或是某一特定情节) was exactly what the African musicians faced as slaves in America.

　　Along with finding new instruments, the African musicians were being exposed to the Western musical culture. This exposure was a vital essence to the evolution of jazz. These new Western melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and aural traditions affected the African musicians tremendously. Of course, White musicians were also being affected by what they head from the African musicians. As time passes, the give and take between the African and Western musical traditions would blossom into what would be called Jazz.

　　To this day, elements that started with the African slaves can still be heard in jazz and rock. One example still in use is the African “call and response” method of early African songs. In a call and response, the soloist sings a portion of a melody while the group responds afterwards (much like a musical question and answer) .

　　Another example is “pitch-bending”. During the advent of jazz, the musicians would bend pitches for expressive purposes. This bent pitch catches our ears because the ear does not know where the pitch will actually end up, thus creating a musical surprise. Countless jazz and rock musicians use this technique today. Listen to a rock lead-guitar solo and count all the pitch-bends utilized. Most of today's synthesizers even have a pitch-bend device built in.

　　The roots of jazz are from African and Western musical traditions blended together. Over a period of many years, these traditions exchanged musical qualities and slowly evolved into jazz. The African emphasis on rhythm combined with Western theoretical musical thought created a new music for all musicians and audiences to enjoy. As the jazz musical tree grew, other sub-styles of music grew from the trunk of jazz. Music styles such as Rhythm and Blues (n. 节奏和布鲁斯) Soul, Funk, Rap, and Rock and Roll are all descendants (n. 子孙, 后裔, 后代) of jazz and the jazz heritage.

Questions For Discussion:

1．Does Jazz come from Africa?

2．Does Jazz come from Blues?

Family Vs Technology

Modern technology certainly changes family behavior, but does it really damage family life as many people fear? Not necessarily, says Dr. Silva, a professor in Sociology(社会学) at the Open University, she also argues it is wrong to assume technology erodes(腐蚀，侵蚀) the quality of family life.

“There is the idea that technology has an influence on the family and the family suffers. My take is quite different,” she explains. “Technological change happens because people’s lives change. And it is people’s choices of how to live that creates processes of innovation(革新) as well. The family has a role like the economy or like technology itself in changing the world. The imagination is important in driving the things technologists want to find for our daily lives. People desire to see nature as it is, so color television comes about,” she says.

In another case, the increase in working mothers helped create a market for labor-saving kitchen equipment. “The time that women have to shop every day for food is no longer available so there is a need to have a refrigerator for food storage,” says Dr. Silva. “The need to cook that food more easily and quickly, means you have developments in cooking technology like the microwave oven(微波炉). The microwave oven already existed because it was developed for the navy during World War Two but it wasn’t used in ordinary families until the early 1980s.

“Technologies for housework were as important as those for work itself,” she says, “So washing machines, refrigerators and microwave ovens are terribly important. We couldn’t imagine what life would be like if we didn’t have them.” Technological changes in the kitchen have played an important role in the changes of family behavior, creating a new social focus in the home.

“With advanced technology, you can feed the family in an easier manner. People can do housework with less difficulty. But that doesn’t mean that family practices are not important — it’s just a different way of doing things.”

1.What is Dr. Silva’s attitude towards the effect that technology has on family life?

A．Worried.                              B．Optimistic(乐观的).

C．Puzzled.                              D．Uncertain.

2.What causes advances in technology according to Dr. Silva?

A．People’s love for nature.

B．Great changes in people’s way of life.

C．People’s desire to change the world.

D．The wonderful imagination in inventing things.

3.What can we learn from the passage?

A．The microwave oven was first used by working mothers.

B．People cook less because of modern kitchen equipment.

C．Technology has little effect on the changes of family behavior.

D．People need less skill to do housework due to advanced technology.

 

"Melts Away Bodyfat Like Magic"

Okuma's Wu-Long Is the World's #1 Weight-Loss Solution...

How would you like to drink away pounds of stubborn bodyfat and inches from your waistline（腰围）within 30 short days?

Yes, that's right. Drink away pounds of good-for-nothing bodyfat and inches from your waistline within one month!

Sound too good to be true? Well, hard as it may be to believe, it absolutely is true! And we'd like to prove it to you at our risk, not yours.  

Here's the deal. Legitimate(合法的)scientific research, published in the world's leading academic journals, is now showing that an extraordinarily rare Wu-Long tea produced at Mt. Wu Yi Shan in China's Fujian Province may carry remarkable slimming（减肥的）and health benefits... so much so that Chinese scientists are calling it, "The world's most powerful fat burner."

Our brand of this, rich tea is called Okuma's Wu-Long (TM), and 37 scientific studies published within the last several months alone show it helps melt away bodyfat; increase energy; and even clarify skin, giving your face a clear, shining glow. More about these scientific benefits in a moment. But first, to express to you just how certain we are Wu-Long will help you, we're giving you a special limited-time offer.

We are so confident Okuma's Wu-Long will help give you the leaner, healthier, body you desire that we're putting our money where our mouth is. We're giving you a zero-risk "test drive" to judge for yourself just how powerful Okuma's Wu-Long really is.

If after using Okuma's Wu-Long you haven't melted away pounds of bodyfat and achieved a more slender（苗条的）waistline, simply return your order within 30 days from the date Wu-Long was delivered to your address to receive a full refund（退款） of your product buy price...no trouble, no hard feelings.

New Special Limited-Time Offers: Buy 3, Get 1 Free (You save $37.00)

The passage is aimed to ____________.

A. telling people some information about Wu-Long tea.

B. proving to people that Okuma's Wu-Long Is the World's #1 Weight-Loss Solution.

C. persuading fat people to buy Wu-Long tea.

D. informing people that Wu-Long tea is on sale.

The underlined sentence “we're putting our money where our mouth is” probably means______.

A. We put our money inside the pocket.

B. We’ll give your money back if you are not satisfied

C. You can order anytime.

D. If you send us small money, we’ll give you another

Which of the following is not the function of Okuma's Wu-Long?

A. curing skin illnesses  

B. increasing energy and intellidence

C. melting away needless bodyfat.

D. making your waistline slender and attractive.

The passage is probably taken from________.

 A. a newspaper   B. a magazine   C. a journal   D. a biology book

If you want to get 4 boxes of Wu-Long tea, you should pay______.

A.185$  B.222$  C.148$   D.111$

根据短文内容，从下框的A--F 选项中选出能概括每一段主题的最佳选项，选项中有一项为多余项。

A.  Children don’t mean to annoy their parents. B.  Children can’t understand their parents. C.  Generation gap exists between parents and kids. D.  Communication can help you become independent. E.  Parents should understand their children. F.  Children want to prove parents are responsible.

【小题1】Parents complain that their teenage children don’t listen to them. They don’t like the way their kids are dressed. They can’t appreciate the music their children prefer. They don’t like the stars their children admire.  Of course, teenagers too are puzzled. They wonder why there is always difference between them and their parents. This is what we call generation gap.
【小题2】Some children have always complained that their parents are out of touch with modern ways; that they do not trust their children to deal with crises; that they talk too much about certain problems and that they have no sense of humor, at least in parent-child relationships. Actually, this happens as a result of misunderstanding because loving the young is the nature of all the parents.
【小题3】Young people often get their parents annoyed with their choices in clothes and hairstyles, in idols （偶像）and music, but that is not their desire. They feel cut off from the adult world into which they have not yet been accepted. So they create a culture and society of their own. Then, if it turns out that their music or idols or clothes or hairstyles annoy their parents, this gives them additional enjoyment. They may think that they are leaders in style and taste.
【小题4】Sometimes you are satisfied if your parents don’t approve of what you do. You may think that they do so for your sake. They tend to bring their children under control just because they want to be responsible for their children. On the contrary, you’ll be sad if they let you do everything in your own way. That will make you think they don’t care about you.
【小题5】If you plan to control your life, you are supposed to communicate with others in a more effective way. You can charm others, especially your parents, into doing things the way you want. You can impress others with your sense of responsibility, so that they will give you the authority to do what you want to do.

Cast your mind back to the past twenty years and hardly did anyone have their own email account. The Internet had just taken off in 1991 and people were only using office and PC­based email exchanges.

In the mid 1990s external email providers appeared. The most famous of these was Hotmail, the first free email provider and web­based email service. Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996. And Microsoft took note of and bought Hotmail for $400 million on December 30, 1997, a nice birthday present for Bhatia who turned 29 that day. It was relaunched as MSN Hotmail and in 2007 was relaunched again as Windows Live Hotmail.

Fast forward the present day and most of us have at least a personal web­based email account. It seems impossible to live without them. One of the biggest advantages of email is the fact that communication has become so much easier, especially with those across different time zones. Email takes seconds to send a message whereas letters, as we used to communicate by, could take weeks. Of course there was the fax, that beeping invention from the 1980s, but it wasn’t as secure as email and you never knew if the person on the other end had picked up your fax or if it had got lost somewhere in the office.

In conclusion, one of the best inventions from the 1990s has to be email. But sometimes people are too closely connected to their email and have a compulsion to check it several times a day. At work, people have become lazy and instead of going to speak to the person sitting next to them, they send an email，causing an in box to pile up with more time spent reading email and responding rather than working. Clearly, an invention that saved time because of its quick and speedy connection can now also cause us to waste a lot of time.

1.The earliest web-based email came into being probably _______.

A. in 1991                            B. in 1996                   C. in 1997                   D. in 2007

2.The author mentions “fax” in the third paragraph in order to tell us that _______.

A. it is exactly as good as email

B. it is much better than email

C. it is less convenient than email

D. it is easier and faster than email

3.The underlined word “compulsion” in Paragraph 4 probably means “_______”.

A. strong desire                  B. common sense               C. special curiosity          D. general idea

4.Which is the main idea of the last paragraph?

A. We should check email boxes frequently.

B. Lazy people like sending an email.

C. Email brings us great convenience.

D. Good inventions also cause problems.