Have you ever noticed background music? You can listen to it everywhere, restaurants, airports,
supermarkets, department stores… Background music is supposed to influence (影響) your attitudes
(態度) and mood (心情).
Companies pay millions of dollars every year for background music. It's supposed to make you feel
better about yourself and the people around you. Factories use it a lot. It makes the workers happy and
work better. It is said (據說) that in a factory, music can increase the production by 4.5 percent.
Workers do not easily get tired if they listen to music all day. A worker in San Francisco said:" If the
music stops, somebody always runs to the telephone to complain about it. "Background music was
started during World War II when some factories had their own orchestras to keep workers happy and
calm . Now, of course, the music is piped in (以電訊設備傳送) by a machine and different kinds of
music are played at different time in a day. For example, the music they play are faster at 10 than 8,
because workers are usually slower then.
It's also very interesting that fast music is played in restaurants where hamburger is sold. Before
playing fast music, customers spent 22 minutes eating hamburgers. When they started playing fast music,
they found that a customer spent only 17 minutes eating! So they have more people coming in and out to
buy hamburgers. It's good for business. You can see why music has become so popular. In Los Angeles
(洛杉磯), for example, 30 different companies are selling background music services.
The Xerox Corporation (靜電復印公司) in Rochester, N．Y．(紐約州的羅切斯特市), spends
more than $80,000 a year for background music. Prison warders (獄警) use it. Farmers also
use it to
keep their cattle calm. It's said that background music
even influence plants.
1. According to t
he passage, background music _____.
A. can possibly make people feel better and influence their attitudes
B. increases the production by 4.5 percent in every factory
C. is sometimes very boring to the workers
2. A worker in San Francisco said if the music stopped, _____.
A. someone would always go to complain about it
B. he himself would call up the background music company
C. people would go and tell the telephone operator about the accident
3. Background music was started in factories _____.
A. in the 1950's
B. because workers t
here all liked music very much
C. during World War II
4. The eating time for each hamburger customer is _____ minutes less than before.
A. 5
B. 7
C. 17
5. What can we learn from the passage?
A. We can only hear background music in some public places of foreign countries.
B. The
Xerox Corporation in Rochester, N．Y．spend$800 thousand a year for background music.
C. Prison warders and farmers also use background music.
