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Text 3
Proponents of different jazz styles have always argued that their predecessor’s musical style did not include essential characteristics that define jazz as jazz. Thus, 1940''s swing was belittled by beboppers of the 1950''s who were themselves attacked by free jazzes of the 1960''s. The neoboppers of the 1980''s and 1990''s attacked almost everybody else. The titanic figure of Black saxophonist John Coltrane has complicated the arguments made by proponents of styles from bebop through neobop because in his own musical journey he drew from all those styles. His influence on all types of jazz was immeasurable. At the height of his popularity, Coltrane largely abandoned playing bebop, the style that had brought him fame, to explore the outer reaches of jazz.
Coltrane himself probably believed that the only essential characteristic of jazz was improvisation, the one constant in his journey from bebop to open-ended improvisations on modal, Indian, and African melodies. On the other hand, this dogged student and prodigious technician — who insisted on spending hours each day practicing scales from theory books — was never able to jettison completely the influence of bebop, with its fast and elaborate chains of notes and ornaments on melody.
Two stylistic characteristics shaped the way Coltrane played the tenor saxophone: he favored playing fast runs of notes built on a melody and depended on heavy, regularly accented beats. The first led Coltrane to sheets of sound” where he raced faster and faster, pile-driving notes into each other to suggest stacked harmonies. The second meant that his sense of rhythm was almost as close to rock as to bebop.
Three recordings illustrate Coltrane’s energizing explorations. Recording Kind of Blue with Miles Davis, Coltrane found himself outside bop, exploring modal melodies. Here he played surging, lengthy solos built largely around repeated motifs — an organizing principle unlike that of free jazz saxophone player Ornette Coleman, who modulated or altered melodies in his solos. On Giant Steps, Coltrane debuted as leader, introducing his own compositions. Here the sheets of sound, downbeat accents, repetitions, and great speed are part of each solo, and the variety of the shapes of his phrases is unique. Coltrane’s searching explorations produced solid achievement. My Favorite Things was another kind of watershed. Here Coltrane played the soprano saxophone, an instrument seldom used by jazz musicians. Musically, the results were astounding. With the soprano’s piping sound, ideas that had sounded dark and brooding acquired a feeling of giddy fantasy.
When Coltrane began recording for the Impulse! Label, he was still searching. His music became raucous, physical. His influence on rockers was enormous, including Jimi Hendrix, the rock guitarist, who, following Coltrane, raised the extended guitar solo using repeated motifs to a kind of rock art form.
1. The primary purpose of the text is to
[A] discuss the place of Coltrane in the world of jazz and describe his musical explorations.
[B] examine the nature of bebop and contrast it with improvisational jazz.
[C] analyze the musical sources of Coltrane’s style and their influence on his work.
[D] acknowledge the influence of Coltrane’s music on rock music and rock musicians.
2. Which of the following best describes the organization of the fourth paragraph?
[A] A thesis referred to earlier in the text is mentioned and illustrated with three specific examples.
[B] A thesis is stated and three examples are given each suggesting that a correction needs to be made to a thesis referred to earlier in the text.
[C] A thesis referred to earlier in the text is mentioned, and three examples are presented and ranked in order of their support of the thesis.
[D] A thesis is stated, three seemingly opposing examples are presented, and their underlying correspondence is explained.
3. According to the text, John Coltrane did all of the following during his career EXCEPT
[A] improvise on melodies from a number of different cultures.
[B] perform as leader as well as soloist.
[C] spend time improving his technical skills.
[D] eliminate the influence of bebop on his own music.
4. According to the text a major difference between Coltrane and other jazz musicians was the
[A] degree to which Coltrane’s music encompassed all of jazz.
[B] repetition of motifs that Coltrane used in his solos.
[C] number of his own compositions that Coltrane recorded.
[D] indifference Coltrane maintained to musical technique.
5. In terms of its tone and form, the text can best be characterized as
[A] dogmatic explanation.
[B] indignant denial.
[C] enthusiastic praise.
[D] speculative study.
Text 4
Many objects in daily use have clearly been influenced by science, but their form and function, their dimensions and appearance, were determined by technologists, artisans, designers, inventors, and engineers — using nonscientific modes of thought. Many features and qualities of the objects that a technologist thinks about cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in the mind by a visual, nonverbal process. In the development of Western technology, it has been nonverbal thinking, by and large, that has fixed the outlines and filled in the details of our material surroundings. Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture in the minds of those who built them.
The creative shaping process of a technologist’s mind can be seen in nearly every artifact that exists. For example, in designing a diesel engine, a technologist might impress individual ways of nonverbal thinking on the machine by continually using an intuitive sense of rightness and fitness. What would be the shape of the combustion chamber? Where should be valves be placed? Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions have a range of answers that are supplied by experience, by physical requirements, by limitations of available space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component of design remains primary.
Design courses, then, should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions, the stock-in-trade of the artist, not the scientist. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail hard thinking， nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.
If courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd random failures that plague automatic control systems are not merely trivial aberrations; they are a reflection of the chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily a problem in mathematics.
1. In the text, the author is primarily concerned with
[A] identifying the kinds of thinking that are used by technologists.
[B] stressing the importance of nonverbal thinking in engineering design.
[C] proposing a new role for nonscientific thinking in the development of technology.
[D] contrasting the goals of engineers with those of technologists.
2. It can be inferred that the author thinks engineering curricula are
[A] strengthened when they include courses in design.
[B] weakened by the substitution of physical science courses for courses designed to develop mathematical skills.
[C] strong because nonverbal thinking is still emphasized by most of the courses.
[D] strong despite the errors that graduates of such curricula have made in the development of automatic control systems.
3.Which of the following statements best illustrates the main point of the first two paragraphs of the text?
[A] When a machine like a rotary engine malfunctions, it is the technologist who is best equipped to repair it.
[B] Each component of an automobile — for example, the engine or the fuel tank — has a shape that has been scientifically determined to be best suited to that component’s function.
[C] A telephone is a complex instrument designed by technologists using only nonverbal thought.
[D] The distinctive features of a suspension bridge reflect its designer’s conceptualization as well as the physical requirements of its site.
4.Which of the following statements would best serve as an introduction to the text?
[A] The assumption that the knowledge incorporated in technological developments must be derived from science ignores the many nonscientific decisions made by technologists.
[B] Analytical thought is no longer a vital component in the success of technological development.
[C] As knowledge of technology has increased, the tendency has been to lose sight of the important role played by scientific thought in making decisions about form, arrangement, and texture.
[D] A movement in engineering colleges toward a technician’s degree reflects a demand for graduates who have the nonverbal reasoning ability that was once common among engineers.
5.The author calls the predicament faced by the Historic American Engineering Record paradoxical (line 6, paragraph 3) most probably because
[A] the publication needed drawings that its own staff could not make.
[B] architectural schools offered but did not require engineering design courses for their students.
[C] college students were qualified to make the drawings while practicing engineers were not.
[D] engineering students were not trained to make the type of drawings needed to record the development of their own discipline.
Text 3 ACDAC
Text 4 BADAD
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