Part II、真題解題
1993年Passage 1
Is language, like food, a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged? Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick Ⅱ in the thirteenth century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent.
All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than lack of language here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously affected.
Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed.
Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and makes vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about l,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar.
Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man's brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a toy-bear with the sound pattern "toy-bear". And even more incredible is the young brain's ability to pick out an order in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyse, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways.
But speech has to be induced, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child , where the mother recognizes the signals in the child' s babbling ( 咿呀學(xué)語) , grasping and smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child's non-verbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.
34. Which of the following can NOT be inferred from the passage?
[A] The faculty of speech is inborn in man.
[B] Encouragement is anything but essential to a child in language learning.
[C] The child's brain is highly selective.
[D] Most children learn their language in definite stages.
[答案] B
[解題思路]
本題應(yīng)該與原文一一對(duì)應(yīng)進(jìn)行排除。A選項(xiàng)對(duì)應(yīng)于文章第五段第一句話"Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak"（近來的一些證據(jù)顯示，嬰兒天生就有說話能力），選項(xiàng)的表述與原文是一致的。C選項(xiàng)對(duì)應(yīng)于文章第五段最后一句話"And even more incredible is the young brain's ability to pick out an order in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyse, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways"（更加令人難以置信的是，嬰兒的大腦能夠從他聽到的周圍各種聲音中找到語言的順序，并且對(duì)其進(jìn)行分析，從而把這種語言以新的方式進(jìn)行組合和重新組合），顯然該選項(xiàng)也是正確的。D選項(xiàng)對(duì)應(yīng)于文章文章第四段第一句話"Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age"（專家們指出人們學(xué)習(xí)語言的階段往往是通過一個(gè)固定的進(jìn)程、并且在一段時(shí)期內(nèi)），而且第三、四兩段主要就是圍繞著D選項(xiàng)的表述展開的。因此這三個(gè)選項(xiàng)都不是答案。而B選型"Encouragement is anything but essential to a child in language learning"的意思是鼓勵(lì)對(duì)孩子學(xué)習(xí)語言來說根本不需要。而文章中談到這個(gè)問題是在最后一段，講的還是母親的sensitive與否對(duì)孩子在學(xué)習(xí)語言方面所取得的進(jìn)步至關(guān)重要。母親的insensitivity會(huì)使孩子有氣餒感，而只會(huì)發(fā)出明顯易于捕捉的信號(hào)，sensitivity（也就是對(duì)孩子的信號(hào)有反饋進(jìn)而encouragement）在孩子的語言發(fā)育和發(fā)展是至關(guān)重要的，因此與B的內(nèi)容正相反，所以B是本道題目的正確答案。
[題目譯文]
下面的哪一項(xiàng)不能從文章中推斷得出？
[A] 人類說話的能力是天生的
[B] 鼓勵(lì)對(duì)于孩子們的語言學(xué)習(xí)來說是至關(guān)重要的
[C] 孩子的大腦有著高度的選擇性
[D] 大多數(shù)孩子在特定的時(shí)期學(xué)會(huì)他們的語言
35. If a child starts to speak later than others, he will
[A] have a high IQ
[B] be less intelligent
[C] be insensitive to verbal signals
[D] not necessarily be backward
[答案] D
[解題思路]
文章第四段第一句話指出"Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ"（專家們指出人們學(xué)習(xí)語言的階段往往是通過一個(gè)固定的進(jìn)程、并且在一段時(shí)期內(nèi)，但是卻有一些特例，那些孩子們掌握語言能力的時(shí)期較晚，但最后卻變成了高智商的人）。這道題目假設(shè)的條件就是如果一個(gè)孩子比其他孩子說話說得遲，這個(gè)孩子將來的情況可能是什么樣子，根據(jù)第四段的第一句話，語言學(xué)習(xí)都有特定的順序和時(shí)間性，但是又有特殊情況，A和B與這句話的前后兩個(gè)部分相矛盾，C的內(nèi)容與原文表述的內(nèi)容不符，原文中并沒有提到孩子是否對(duì)事物(或信號(hào))有不敏感的表現(xiàn)，而是提到他們的母親在他們學(xué)習(xí)語言的階段所發(fā)出的非語言信號(hào)敏感與否，因此C也不正確，只有D最符合第四段第一句話的表述，它包括兩種可能性，即這個(gè)孩子有可能很遲鈍，但是有可能又很聰明，因此D是本道題目的正確答案。
[題目譯文]
如果一個(gè)孩子比其他孩子開始說話的時(shí)間晚，他會(huì)
[A] 有很高的智商
[B] 不那么聰明
[C] 對(duì)語言信號(hào)不敏感
[D] 不一定落后于其他人
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