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北京市怀柔区2018届九年级上学期英语期末检测试题

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日期: 2024-11-27
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    Songs help memories

    The power of music

    Most people can remember important news stories clearly, whether it was the murder of President Kennedy in the US or 9/11.But now psychologists Martin Conway and Catriona Morrison, from the University of Leeds in the UK, are investigating how music can create “autobiographical memories” of the main events in our lives. The study is online. People have to choose a song by the Beatles and describe the memories that they have when they listen to it.

Reminiscence bump

    Morrison explained that they looked at different age groups and their memories. We often remember more from when we are teenagers and this is called “the reminiscence bump”. This is the time in your life when you form your idea of who you are. For older people who have memories related to the Beatles' music, most of those memories are from when they were teenagers. But younger people also had clear personal memories from their past.

    She loves you

    This study was different from other memory studies, because people remembered events from their past with lots more details. Morrison explained:     “It was like people had travelled back to the past, and they had very clear memories of things that had happened. When they heard a song like She Loves You by the Beatles, they could remember one night in autumn 1963.They remembered what they were wearing, what the weather was like and what their friend said to them. You get a lot more information than if you just say, ‘tell me about a night you remember'. ”

    The study has found that music could be used with people who have problems remembering the past. “You could use music to help improve people's ability to remember,” said Morrison. “In the future, we would like to do more experiments to see how useful music is in helping people to remember the past, and compare it to other things that might also help.”

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    Are you wearing old clothes?

    Don't worry if you are. Clothes bought at thrift shops are more popular than ever in the West nowadays.

    A lot of young people have an interest in secondhand clothing.

Goodwill Industries, one of the most famous secondhand shopping companies in the US, said there had been an increase of 84 percent in money made from the sale of donated goods from 2007 to 2012, from $1.9 billion(about 13 billion yuan) to $3.5 billion.

    Fanny Moizant, an online group that sells used clothes from luxury brands(奢侈品牌), agrees that “secondhand” is part of fashion now.

“Fashion has changed,” she told the Financial Times last month.” People need our service —they need a place to let go and get rid of this excess(过剩).”

    It wasn't always this way. Secondhand clothes used to be much less popular.

    Keren Charles, 37, from the US, remembers how embarrassed she was the first time she entered a thrift store more than 20 years ago.

    “I didn't want anyone to see me,” Charles told CNN. “In high school, people thought you were either poor or homeless.”

    Now, the fashion fan says about 97 percent of her clothes are secondhand. Her favorite find is a $5 blue evening dress that could be worth hundreds of dollars.

    So what is a thrift shop, exactly?

According to the US Association of Resale Professionals, a thrift shop is run by a not-for –profit(非盈利的)organization to get money to charitable causes.

    The shops have become popular in recent times due to economic reasons.

    More customers began coming to thrift shops in the US at the start of the recession(萧条), according to CNN.

    And now secondhand clothing andvintageitems are showing up in Western high fashion and street wear.

    Fashionable hip-hop artist Macklemore and Ryan Lewis even wore a 2013 Billboard Music Award for their hit song Thrift Shop. The song is about “looking for a come up”(search for cheap things in a thrift store.

    However, thrift store culture may be great for new shoppers and for business but it's not so great for shoppers like Charles who are still “looking for a come up.”

    “The competition is tough now,” she told CNN. “You're in the thrift stores, and you're seeing so many other people, but it's still better than shopping at a department store.”

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