Music is an international language. The songs that are sung or played by instruments are beautiful to all people everywhere.

    Popular music in America is what every student likes. Students carry small radios with earphones and listen to music before class, after class and at lunch. Students with cars buy large speakers and play the music loudly as they drive on the street.

    Adult drivers listen to music on the car radio as they drive to work. They also listen to the news about sports, the weather, politics, and activities of the American people. But most of the radio broadcast is music.

    Pop or popular music singers make much money. They make a CD or tape which radio stations use in every state. Once the popular singer is heard throughout the country, young people buy his or her tapes. Some of the money from these tapes comes to the singer. Wherever the singer goes, all the young people want to meet him or her. Now the singer has become a national star.

    Besides pop music, there are two other kinds of music that is important to Americans. One is called folk music. It tells stories about the common life of Americans. The other is called western or country music. This was started by cowboys who would sing at night to the cows they were watching. Today, any music about country life and the love between a country boy and his girl is called western or country music.

    I want to tell you the story of one of my old friends called Bob，His teachers called him A Troublemaker，They also said that he had no future and no hope. But now he owns a small second -hand bookstore store which makes him enough money to live on and also to support his mother.

    He told me that after he finished grade nine, he went to study at a technical college. He was a pretty bad student so he became one of the gang (一帮) leaders there. Many of them got caught many times for fighting.

    It looked like nothing could change his life. That was until one sad day when his father died. That changed everything.

    After his father died, his mother had to work very hard to make enough money to support the family. He told me that he really pitied his mum after his dad died. He felt that he needed to earn some money rather than let his mum work alone. He loved reading cartoon(卡通)books and had been collecting them for years. As his family was short of money, he decided that he should sell them. He did this by the side of the road where his mother was selling food.

    Soon he realized that his books were very popular. So he decided to set up his own business. He started his business by going around buying cartoon books from other people. He bought them for 25% and then sold them for half price. He could make enough money to help support the family.

    He was a troublemaker to his teachers but he is a hero to me. If you are judged as a bad student or as someone being stupid, I suggest you pay no attention to what they say. Just do your best in everything. Don't give up so easily. Believe in yourself. If you think that you can do it, then you can. Believe me, one day you could be more successful than those persons who looked down upon you.

    I was with a group of businessmen, and we were dealing with a question — what is a good person?

    At a certain point during the discussion, one of the students, a young man of about 30, described an event that happened at Christmas. He and his five-year-old son were decorating the Christmas tree, and a little boy came to the front door begging. If you ever visit Mexico, you will see that the people there take begging as nothing to get upset about and nothing to get embarrassed by.

    So, this little boy came to the door, a boy about the same age as my student's son. The father and the son went to the front door, and the father went back with his five-year-old son and said to him, “Give him one of your toys.” At the words, the little boy quickly picked up one toy, and his father said to him, “No, no, give him your favorite toy.”

    And the little boy, like a little tiger, said, “No way!” He cried; he refused. But the father, like a big tiger in a way, insisted gently, “No, you must give him one of your favorite toys.”

    And finally the boy, with his head down, picked up a toy he had just gotten. The father waited in the living room, and the boy walked to the front door with the toy in his hand. The father waited and waited.

    What do you think happened?

    After a couple of minutes, his son came running back into the living room, his face lighted up. “Daddy,” he said, “can I do that again?” I think I have got the answer to the question.

Dear Editor,

    I am writing to you about the article in your magazine last month about youth crime. As a teenager myself I found the article rather offensive(冒犯的) as it suggested that the largest part of teenagers get into trouble with the police at some time or another. I can honestly say that I have never committed a crime(犯罪) and as far as I know, neither have any of my friends.

    I don't know where the journalist got his information from or if he did any proper research, but the way he described teenagers gave me the impression that he doesn't actually know many teenagers. Maybe when he was younger he was regularly in trouble with the police and that's where he got his ideas from. If this is true then he shouldn't judge other people from his own behaviour in the past.

    Many teenagers I know always help other people in the community, such as raising money for charity and doing voluntary work. A group of us recently spent an entire Sunday morning picking up litter in our local park. We didn't get paid for it; we just wanted to make it cleaner and safer for everyone, especially as many young children and dog walkers use the park.

    Also, as teenagers, we are far too busy studying for exams and doing homework to be "walking the streets every night, looking for trouble", as your journalist wrote in his article. I have to study after school every night during the week. I do get some free time at the weekend but I like to play football, go cycling or swimming, go to the cinema or have coffee with my friends and have a chance to talk to them. I think you will agree that there is nothing criminal about that.

    As your magazine is aimed at young readers, I think your journalists should be more careful about what they write and they should research their ideas better, or you may find that teenagers stop buying your magazine altogether.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Browning

    No poem should ever be discussed or "analyzed", until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

    All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling 'interpretation' of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching cannot replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

    I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than "analyzing" it, if there isn't time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is "a criticism of life", "a heightening of life, enjoyment with others". It is "an approach to the truth of feeling", and it "can save your life". It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

    I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don't like it should not be forced to put that dislike on anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.

    There's a world of difference between a horror movie and a comedy—the former scares you half to death while the latter leaves you rolling on the floor with laughter. But try watching them without the background music and you just might decide they're not so different after all. Music and movies have been closely connected since the beginning of the film industry—even before the voices of actors were recorded. In movies, music helps to provide a sense of time and place, convey ideas about the characters and, most importantly, draw emotions out of the audience.

    Studies have long shown that our heart rates and anxiety levels rise and fall depending on the speed of the music we hear. Using this knowledge, composers use sudden changes in film music speed to create fear among audiences. Slowing the speed of the music will have the opposite effect, bringing about a sense of peace or a dreamlike quality. The use of dissonant (不和谐的) tones and noises is another technique that heightens tension. Humans naturally become unnerved when we hear dissonant sounds because such noises are usually associated with danger, like those that animals make to warn against predators (捕食者).

    As crucial as it is, the best film music is subtle. All that audiences are supposed to feel is a heightened sense of emotion—they shouldn't realize what's causing it. Only when the music is taken out of the film should audiences understand its effects.

    In keeping with this principle, some filmmakers are even using what's called "infrasound" (次声波) to arouse fear. While we may not be able to hear it because its frequency is below the range of the human ear, infrasound has been proven to cause anxiety, tremble and even sorrow. For example, infrasound was used in the soundtrack of the 2007 horror movie Paranormal Activity, and audiences reposed extremely high fear levels despite the 1ack of action throughout the movie. "It doesn't affect everyone equally," said British science writer Philip Ball, author of The Music Instinct, but he predicted that "we will see more of it used in movies in the future".