Afijos

TEACHING VOCABULARY IN COLOUR

Colours have a tremendous influence on human health and psyche. Lack or overabundance of certain colours can cause physical or emotional disorders. Exposure to colour vibrations is used in the treatment of a number of diseases and mental problems. The colour of the classroom walls, curtains or even the teacher’s clothes can either soothe or irritate students. Colour is also an important tool in visual thinking. It separates ideas so they can be seen more clearly; it stimulates creativity and aids the memory. Colour captures and directs attention. Even conventionally outlined notes can benefit from colour coding; maps, cluster maps, mandalas, and most expressive drawings are considerably more effective in colour (Williams 1983: 107). It is not unimportant, however, which colours we use to stimulate students. To benefit from using them, we should know what possible power they have over our students. Then, we will not expose learners to calming vibrations if we expect them to be active, or to intellectual vibrations if we expect them to use their imagination. According to Muths (1994) and Mertz (1995), the most commonly used colours have the following properties:
Green symbolizes balance and agreement with nature and other people. It soothes the nervous system. It gives hope and peace of mind. It is said to be favoured by quiet, patient, open-minded traditionalists. Too much green, however, evokes sadness and hidden fears.
Blue is a calming and cooling colour. It is relaxing for the eyes and cheering for the mind. It promotes intellectual processes, that is why people who favour it are clever and industrious, but not always creative. They are exceptionally just, dutiful and loyal.
Yellow, when bright and sunny, reinforces the nervous system and helps in analytical studies. It symbolizes wisdom, shrewdness, ambition and intellectualism of the left brain. People who like yellow are happy optimists, but also critical thinkers, who will eagerly defend their views. They often lack creativity and imagination. Pale shades of yellow, on the other hand, mean unfavourable emotions like envy or a tendency to plotting and intrigue.
Black is the colour of mystery and the unknown. It protects people’s individualism and makes them seem more unusual and interesting. People who like black are profound explorers and original thinkers.
Orange symbolizes vitality, good humour and creative fantasy. It inspires and invigorates people who otherwise are apathetic, uninterested or depressed. It is favoured by sociable extroverts and those who need cheering up.
Red is the most exhilarating colour, which stimulates vivid emotions of the right brain. It promotes health, energy and interest. In some people, however, it may evoke aggression.
White stands for youth, cleanliness and naivety. People who like white strive for perfection. They are submissive idealists, whose dreams are difficult to fulfill.
Pink, if not overused, has a calming effect. It is a symbol of daydreaming and optimism. It is favoured by delicate people longing for a feeling of security.
It is significant that as many as 24% of all optimists opted for blue, which is a cheering colour, and 25% of pessimists preferred green, which could make them even more sad. Students were also asked how important colours were for them and what colours they favoured in their learning environment. Most of them claimed that they disliked brown, they found dirty-yellow or greenish rooms depressing, and that they considered white chalk and black board formal and uninspiring.


FORUM Vol 36 No 3, July - September 1998 Page 12

Predicción de contenido

Music on the Brain

Experts still dont know how and why tunes tickle our fancy—but new research offers intriguing clues

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

I IT’S HARD TO EXAGGERATE THE EFFECT music can have on the human brain. A mere snippet of song from the past can trigger memories as vivid as anything Proust experienced from the aroma of his petite madeleine. A tune can in­duce emotions ranging from unabashed joy to deep sorrow and can drive listeners into states of patriotic fervor or religious frenzy—to say nothing of its legendary ability to soothe the savage breast.
II Yet in spite of music's remarkable influence on the human psyche, scientists have spent little time attempting to understand why it possesses such potency."We tend to think of music as an art or a cul­tural attribute," notes Robert Zatorre, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, "but it is a complex human behavior that is as worthy of scientific study as any other."
III That's why Zatorre helped organize a conference, "The Biological Foundations of Music," sponsored last week by the New York Academy of Sciences, at which experts in disciplines ranging from neuroscience and neurology to brain imaging and psychology met to exchange notes about what's known—and, more important, what remains to be learned—in this small but growing field.
IV What seems clear is that the ability to experience and react to music is deeply embedded in the biology of the nervous system. While music tends to be processed mostly in the right hemisphere of the brain, no single set of cells is devoted to the task. Different networks of neurons are activated, depending on whether a person is listening to music or playing an instrument, and whether or not the music involves lyrics.
V Specific brain disorders can affect the perception of music in very specific ways. Experiments done on epileptics decades ago showed that stimulating certain areas of the temporal lobe on both sides of the brain awakened "musical memories"— vivid recreations of melodies that the patients had heard years earlier. Lesions in the temporal lobe can result in so-called musicogenic epilepsy, an extremely rare form of the disorder in which seizures are triggered by the sound of music. Autism offers an even greater puzzle. People with this condition are mentally deficient, yet most are proficient musicians; some are "musical savants" possessed of extraordinary talent.
VI The opposite is true of the less than 1% of the population who suffer from amusia, or true tone deafness. They literally cannot recognize a melody, let alone tell two of them apart, and they are incapable of repeating a song (although they think they are doing it correctly). Even simple, familiar tunes such as Frére Jacques and Happy Birthday are mystifying to amusics, but when the lyrics are spoken rather than sung, amusics are able to recognize the song immediately.
VII "This goes way beyond an inability to carry a tune," observes psychologist Isabelle Peretz of the University of Montreal. "They can't dance, and they can't tell the difference between consonance [harmony] and dissonance either. They all appear to have been born without the wiring necessary to process music." Intriguingly, people with amusia show no overt signs of brain damage or short-term-memory impairment, and magnetic-resonance-imaging scans of their brains look normal.
VIII There is evidently no way to help these unfortunate folks (though, admittedly, they don't know what they're missing). But for instrumentalists, at least, music can evi­dently trigger physical changes in the brain's wiring. By measuring faint magnetic fields emitted by the brains of professional musicians, a team led by Christo Pantev of the University of Muenster's Institute of Experimental Audiology in Germany has shown that intensive practice of an instrument leads to discernible enlargement of parts of the cerebral cortex, the layer of gray matter most closely associated with higher brain function.
IX As for music's emotional impact, there is some indication that music can affect levels of various hormones, including cortisol (involved in arousal and stress), testosterone (aggression and arousal) and oxytocin (nurturing behavior) as well as trigger release of the natural opiates known as endorphins. Using pet scanners, Zatorre has shown that the parts of the brain in­volved in processing emotion seem to light up with activity when a subject hears music.
X As tantalizing as these bits of research are, they barely begin to address the mysteries of music and the brain, including the deepest question of all: Why do we appreciate music? Did our musical ancestors have an evolutionary edge over their tin-eared fellows? Or is music, as M.I.T. neuro-scientist Steven Pinker asserts, just "auditory cheesecake," with no biological value? Given music's central role in most of our lives, it's time that scientists found the answers.

Reported by Andrea Dorfman/New York
Illustration for TIME by Seymour Chwast

Ejercicios

Escribe sobre cada línea el número de párrafo en el que se encuentra la siguiente información
a) Descripción de la amusia ______
b) Descripción de la forma en que reacciona el sistema nervioso ______
c) Efectos que puede tener la música ______
d) Enfermedades del cerebro que afectan la forma en que se percibe la música______
e) Hormonas que afecta la música ______
f) Lo que Christo Pantev dice acerca de tocar un instrumento ______
g) Opinión de Isabelle Peretz acerca de la amusia ______
h) Opinión de Robert Zatorre acerca de la música ______
i) Se organiza una conferencia acerca de las bases biológicas de la música______

Contesta lo siguiente de acuerdo con el contenido del texto
¿Qué efectos puede tener la música? _____________________________________________________________________________
¿Cuál es la opinión de Robert Zatorre? _____________________________________________________________________________
¿Cuáles enfermedades se dice que afectan la forma en que se percibe la música? ____________________________________________________________________
¿Qué es la amusia? _____________________________________________________________________________
¿Qué dice Christo Pantev sobre tocar un instrumento? _____________________________________________________________________________
¿Qué hormonas afecta la música? _____________________________________________________________________________

Reflexión
¿Por qué es importante hacer predicciones sobre el contenido de un texto? _____________________________________________________________________________
Menciona tres ejemplos de cuándo se utiliza la predicción además de la lectura. _____________________________________________________________________________

The Present Simple

Use do, does, don't or doesn't to complete the jokes:

1 What type of car .......... your dad drive?
> I .......... know the name, but it starts with a "P".
2 . . . . . . . . . . . . you ever have problems making up your mind?
That's strange, our car starts with a key.
> Well, yes and no.
3 Dad, .......... a dishwasher wash dishes?
> Yes, Billy. That's right.
And .......... a bus driver drive buses?
> Yes.
And .......... a weightlifter lift weights?
> Yes. Why all the questions?
Well, .......... a shoplifter lift shops?
4 What .......... ants take when they are ill?
> I .......... know.
ANTibiotics!
5 What .......... your father do for a living?
> As little as possible!
6 What .......... you clean your top teeth with?
> A toothbrush, of course.
And what .......... you clean your bottom with?
> The same.
Really! I use paper!
7 .......... you love me?
> Of course, darling.
But .......... you love me with all your heart?
> With all my heart, with all my liver, all my kidneys ...
8 .......... this train go to York?
> That's right, sir. Change at Leeds.
What! I want my change here. I'm not waiting until Leeds.
9 Mrs Smith .......... have soft and lovely hands like you, mummy. Why is that?
> Because our servants do all the housework!
10 Mum, .......... God go to the bathroom?
> No, son, why .......... you ask?
Well, every morning dad goes to the bathroom, knocks on the door and shouts, "Oh God! Are you still in there?"