全新版大学英语听说教程2unit5原文

1. Most people like music. In fact, we are surrounded by it. It's on the radio and television and can be heard in stores and offices. However, not everyone likes the same kind of music.

2. The manager of the music shop was called Brian Epstein. Because so many people had asked for a record by the Beatles, Epstein decided to go and listen to the group himself.

3. Firstly I would like to talk about classical music and its representative composers, then I will move on to jazz music, and finally I will focus on pop music in the last century.

4. We listen to exciting music and our hearts beat faster, our blood pressure rises, and our blood flows more quickly. In short, we're stimulated.

2-5-B Background Music

Background music may seem harmless, but it can have a powerful effect on those who hear it. Recorded background music first found its way into factories, shops and restaurants in the USA. Very soon it spread to other parts of the world. Now it is becoming difficult to go shopping or eat a meal without listening to music.

To begin with, background music was intended simply to create a soothing atmosphere. Recently, however, it's becoming a big business. An American marketing expert has shown that music can boost sales or increase factory production by as much as a third.

But it has to be the light music. Lively music has no effect at all on sales. Slow music can increase receipts by 34%. This is probably because shoppers slow down and have more opportunity to spot items they would like to buy. Yet, slow music isn't always the answer. The expert found that in restaurants slow music meant customers took longer to eat their meals, which reduced overall sales. So restaurant owners might be well advised to play faster music to keep the customers moving -- unless, of course, the resulting indigestion leads to complaints.

Celine Dion

Celine Dion is the youngest of 14 children in a working-class family in Quebec, Canada. Her parents, who both loved music, encouraged her to develop her musical talent. At 12, Celine had composed the song "It Was Only a Dream". Her mother and brother helped her to make a recording of that song and sent it off to an address they found on an album of a popular French singer. The address was that of Rene Angelil, who became her first conquest, but there would be millions more.

Celine's rise from a teenage singer to a pop superstar has been steady, but not without difficulties. Record companies were at first less enthusiastic about investing in a teenager than Angelil, who mortgaged his own home to pay for her first album. But her first two albums won a great success. And by 1983 she became the first Canadian ever to have a gold record in France. In 1990, Celine made her first English language record with Unison but her real breakthrough in America came when she was selected by Disney to sing the theme song of Beauty and the Beast. The song went to No. 1 on the chart and won both a Grammy and an Academy award. In 1996 she performed at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and in 1997, she recorded the theme song for Titanic, and her name became synonymous with the enormously successful film.

Celine Dion's favorite theme is love. She sings the depth and the power of love in a great many of her hits such as "Love Can Move Mountains", "Because You Loved Me", "The Power of Love" and, of course, the theme song of Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On".