Read the text about the benefits of music. The reading passage has six paragraphs, A–F. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter. There is one paragraph you don’t need.
The Benefits of Music
A Much research has been done into the benefits of music. Music helps babies to develop in their mothers’ wombs even before birth, and it also helps everyone from young children right up to the elderly to understand and manage everyday feelings such as happiness or sadness. Many people have favourite songs for certain situations; when they feel angry, for example, they know exactly which music to listen to in order to give them the calm they need at that moment. Music has the ability to very successfully express the exact same feelings that people have.
B As well as changing people’s mood, music can also help people who are in pain. Two groups of patients took part in a recent scientific test – one group listened to music for an hour each day for a week, and the other didn’t. The data was examined and a report of the results was published. This showed that people’s idea of pain was reduced by up to 21%; the people who listened to music reported an improvement in their condition, compared with those who hadn’t listened to music. The explanation scientists give is that as listening to music puts people in a better mood, they feel less negative. Patients experiencing negative energy almost always take longer to recover than those who don’t feel like this.
C Many people listen to soft music to help them fall asleep. This practice is supported by studies in a variety of settings. The advice is to avoid listening to lively dance music before you aim to fall asleep.
However, if you’re trying to wake up in the morning, go for fast-tempo music rather than lullabies.
D Music has further benefits when it comes to learning, according to some organizations. Research has shown that studying and playing music may actually help students improve their grades overall. This may be because the human brain works very much in the same way patterns do in music. How exactly this works is still unknown; what we do know, however, is that the thought patterns that people have while creating music help increase language-learning skills and maths.
E Social skills also benefit when people are exposed to music. One musician famously said that music is the language of the universe – bringing people together, and allowing people from all parts of the world to experience similar feelings. It can fill in any gaps or differences between cultures in a way that spoken language cannot.
F Some research shows that people who play music have better-developed communication between the left and right sides of their brain. Experts say that playing music helps to send messages to the brain. These messages then result in other brain activity. In fact, experiments have produced some fascinating results. When a selection of people were asked to take a well-known test to find out how intelligent they are, those who listened to a famous piece of classical music while doing the test scored considerably more points than those who didn’t listen to music.
