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.
31. The purpose of Frederick II's experiment was__
[A] to prove that children are born with the ability to speak
[B] to discover what language a child would speak without hearing any human speech
[C] to find out what role careful nursing would play in teaching a child to speak
[D] to prove that a child could be damaged without learning a language
[答案] B
[解題思路]
本題對應(yīng)于文章第一段最后一句話"Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent"（他希望能夠發(fā)現(xiàn)孩子在沒有聽到任何母語的時(shí)候會(huì)說什么，因此他囑咐護(hù)士們都保持沉默），其中"Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue"正是該實(shí)驗(yàn)的目的，因此正確答案為B。A和C選項(xiàng)在原文中都沒有提到。D的內(nèi)容與原文不符，原文中只是說，語言是否像人類其他必需品一樣，沒有它孩子們在生命的某個(gè)關(guān)鍵時(shí)刻就會(huì)因此"餓死"或是被毀掉。FrederickⅡ的實(shí)驗(yàn)與這一問題的答案或許有聯(lián)系，但并不是這個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)的目的，因此D也不正確。
[題目譯文]
弗雷德雷克二世的實(shí)驗(yàn) 。
[A] 是用來證明孩子們天生就有說話能力
[B] 是用來發(fā)現(xiàn)孩子們在沒有聽到任何人類語言時(shí)會(huì)說何種語言
[C] 是用來找出細(xì)心的照料對于教孩子說話起到怎樣的作用
[D] 是用來證明孩子們?nèi)绻麤]有學(xué)會(huì)一門語言就會(huì)嚴(yán)重受害
32. The reason some children are backward in speaking is most probably that__
[A] they are incapable of learning language rapidly
[B] they are exposed to too much language at once
[C] their mothers respond inadequately to their attempts to speak
[D] their mothers are not intelligent enough to help them
[答案] C
[解題思路]
本題對應(yīng)于文章第三段的第一、二句話"Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking"（現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)不存在弗雷德雷克規(guī)定的那種嚴(yán)格的情境。但是，一些孩子在語言表達(dá)能力方面仍然會(huì)落后于其他孩子），而只有C選項(xiàng)符合原文的意思。A表達(dá)的意思正好與第三段的第二句話的最后部分相反，B和D選項(xiàng)的內(nèi)容在文章中沒有提到。
[題目譯文]
導(dǎo)致一些孩子語言能力落后于其他人的最可能原因是 。
[A] 他們不能很快地學(xué)習(xí)語言
[B] 他們一下子面對著太多的語言
[C] 他們的母親對于孩子們要說話的努力沒有給與充分的反應(yīng)
[D] 他們的母親不夠聰明，因此不能幫助孩子
33. What is exceptionally remarkable about a child is that
[A] he is born with the capacity to speak
[B] he has a brain more complex than an animal's
[C] he can produce his own sentences
[D] he owes his speech ability to good nursing
[答案] C
[解題思路]
根據(jù)題干內(nèi)容，可以找出本題對應(yīng)于文章倒數(shù)第二段的最后一句話"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），因此C選項(xiàng)符合這句話的意思，題干中的remarkable也正好對應(yīng)于原文的incredible。A選項(xiàng)表述是沒有錯(cuò)誤的，只是它不符合題干的意思。關(guān)于B選項(xiàng)，文章第五段的第二句提到了人類的大腦比動(dòng)物復(fù)雜，但是這也不是"exceptionally remarkable about a child"，因此該選項(xiàng)也可以排除。D的內(nèi)容與文章中表達(dá)的內(nèi)容有出入，原文第二段中說"without good mothering,in the first year of life especially,the capacity to survive is seriously affected"（如果沒有母親的照料，初始的生命特別在第一年的生存能力將受到巨大的影響），接著在第三段又指出，有些孩子在說話方面比較遲鈍是因?yàn)槠淠赣H對他們所發(fā)出的信號(hào)反應(yīng)不敏感，以致使他們的母親忽視了這些敏感階段，從而使孩子獲得語言技能的最佳時(shí)間飛逝而過，因此D也不是正確答案
[題目譯文]
對于孩子來說尤其重要的一點(diǎn)是
[A] 天生具有說話能力
[B] 擁有比動(dòng)物更加復(fù)雜的大腦
[C] 能夠說出一些句子
[D] 其語言能力取決于是否得到細(xì)心照料
