PBS高端访谈:年轻的大脑受益于音乐训练

 　　JOSH ARONSON: Vianey Calixto lives in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles and like many of her friends she was struggling in school.

　　Vianey’s interest in learning music prompted her parents to enroll¹ her in a music program in their neighborhood called the Harmony Project. In the three years since, much has changed in Vianey’s life.

　　VIANEY CALIXTO: Music is like a dialogue because we can play a certain thing - let’s say the violin can play something back –it could be the same melody different notes and it’s like a conversation talking back and forth².

　　JOSH ARONSON: Serving more than 2000 students with a budget of 2.5 million dollars, the mostly privately³ funded Harmony Project is filling a gap in low-income areas where schools have cut music education programs. Students getat least 5 hours of music classes and rehearsals⁴ each week year round. For poor students it’s tuition free including their instrument.

　　Fifty-nine-year-old Margaret Martin started the Harmony Project in 2001 after witnessing something on the streets of her hometown – Los Angeles.

　　MARGARET MARTIN: This party of badass LA gang members comes walking through a farmers’ market and stops to listen to a tiny kid playing Brahms on a tiny violin. They had shaved heads, tats, gang clothing, and attitude. After five or six minutes without saying a word to one another I watched those gang members pull out their own money and lay it gently in the child's case. Those gang members were teaching me that they would rather be doing what the child was doing than what they were doing but they never had the chance.

　　MARGARET MARTIN: Harmony Project is a researched based replicable⁵ program and we commit to our students for their entire childhood.

　　JOSH ARONSON: The programs are started purposely in tough inner city areas to serve children of poverty.

　　MARGARET MARTIN: We know that dropout⁶ rates are about 50 percent in the neighborhoods where we built Harmony Project Programs.

　　More than 80 percent of poor black and Hispanic kids do not read at grade level.

　　JOSH ARONSON: It’s well documented that children whose mothers have little education, are rarely being read to and verbal interaction is minimal⁷. Scientists believe that this not only puts them behind in school but those children rarely catch up because their brains are not be developing as rapidly as the brains of more stimulated⁸ kids.

　　MARGARET MARTIN: Early sustained music learning is actually the frame upon which education itself can be built for low-income kids.

　　JOSH ARONSON: Margaret Martin was convinced of that because of the graduation rate of kids who have gone through her program. This year, she says, 93 percent of them finished high school in four years and went to college. But Martin acknowledges she does not have the formal training to prove that music helps kids grasp language better and become more proficient⁹ readers. So she enlisted¹⁰ the help of this woman. Her name is Dr. Nina Kraus. She is a neurobiologist at NorthwesternUniversity and for 25 years she has studied how the brain processes information – the neurobiology of auditory learning.

　　JOSH ARONSON: What is the connection between sound and reading?

　　DR. NINA KRAUS: Well there's a connection with sound and reading in that when you're learning to read you need to connect the sounds of words that you've heard for many years with the symbol on the page. So you're making a sound to meaning connection.

　　JOSH ARONSON: No one has ever proven conclusively¹¹ that music improves learning, and some studies have found no link at all. But, after being contacted by Martin, the Northwestern scientist designed tests to measure the impact music had on this group of low-income kids.

　　Dr. Kraus started in 2011 with a group of 80 students from an LA gang zone. The students came from similar backgrounds and were all motivated to learn music at the Harmony Project. Half the kids were selected to start music study then and the other half, the control group, waited a year to begin. Dr. Kraus’s team took a mobile testing lab to LA at the beginning and then once a year for two years, to assess the change in the kids’ brain response in specific areas important for good reading and learning skills.

　　JOSH ARONSON: What are some of the tests like that you actually do on these kids to measure these things?

　　DR. NINA KRAUS: We’re very interested in children's rhythmic¹² skills. And so we ask them to tap along with a steady rhythm.

　　So if you just present a beat like on a metronome and you ask a child to tap along with a beat, that ability is linked with reading ability.

　　LAB TECHNICIAN: Ready set go.

　　DR. NINA KRAUS: We ask them to listen to words or parts of words…

　　LAB TECHNICIAN: Imagine that you are at a party – there will be a woman talking and several other talkers in the background.

　　DR. NINA KRAUS: We ask them to listen sentences that are presented in noisy backgrounds and they have to repeat back as much of the sentence that they were able to hear…

　　SPEAKER RECORDING¹³ AND THEN KID IN THE LAB REPEATS: The pencil was cut to be sharp ….

　　DR. NINA KRAUS: And of course the background gets noisier and nosier andit gets harder and harder to hear the sounds.

　　CHILD IN LAB: A toad and a frog each had to tell a tale

1 enroll   

v.招收；登记；入学；参军；成为会员（英)enrol

参考例句：

• I should like to enroll all my children in the swimming class.我愿意让我的孩子们都参加游泳班。
• They enroll him as a member of the club.他们吸收他为俱乐部会员。

2 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

3 privately   

adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地

参考例句：

• Some ministers admit privately that unemployment could continue to rise.一些部长私下承认失业率可能继续升高。
• The man privately admits that his motive is profits.那人私下承认他的动机是为了牟利。

4 rehearsals   

n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 )；排练；复述；重复

参考例句：

• The earlier protests had just been dress rehearsals for full-scale revolution. 早期的抗议仅仅是大革命开始前的预演。
• She worked like a demon all through rehearsals. 她每次排演时始终精力过人。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 replicable   

可复制的，能复现的

参考例句：

• The database must be closed to make the database replicable programmatically. 若要用程序将数据库设置为可同步复制，则必须关闭数据库。
• You must select a database with a least one replicable table. 必须选择一个具有一个以上可复制表的数据库。

6 dropout   

n.退学的学生；退学；退出者

参考例句：

• There is a high dropout rate from some college courses.有些大学课程的退出率很高。
• In the long haul,she'll regret having been a school dropout.她终归会后悔不该中途辍学。

7 minimal   

adj.尽可能少的，最小的

参考例句：

• They referred to this kind of art as minimal art.他们把这种艺术叫微型艺术。
• I stayed with friends, so my expenses were minimal.我住在朋友家，所以我的花费很小。

8 stimulated   

a.刺激的

参考例句：

• The exhibition has stimulated interest in her work. 展览增进了人们对她作品的兴趣。
• The award has stimulated her into working still harder. 奖金促使她更加努力地工作。

9 proficient   

adj.熟练的，精通的；n.能手，专家

参考例句：

• She is proficient at swimming.她精通游泳。
• I think I'm quite proficient in both written and spoken English.我认为我在英语读写方面相当熟练。

10 enlisted   

adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持）

参考例句：

• enlisted men and women 男兵和女兵
• He enlisted with the air force to fight against the enemy. 他应募加入空军对敌作战。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

11 conclusively   

adv.令人信服地，确凿地

参考例句：

• All this proves conclusively that she couldn't have known the truth. 这一切无可置疑地证明她不可能知道真相。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• From the facts,he was able to determine conclusively that the death was not a suicide. 根据这些事实他断定这起死亡事件并非自杀。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 rhythmic   

adj.有节奏的，有韵律的

参考例句：

• Her breathing became more rhythmic.她的呼吸变得更有规律了。
• Good breathing is slow,rhythmic and deep.健康的呼吸方式缓慢深沉而有节奏。

13 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。