Question

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 experiment of Frederick 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 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 there 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 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 order 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 they can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to five words. At three he knows about 1,000 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 analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways.

But speech has to be induced（激發(fā)，引起）, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the children’s babbling（咿呀聲）,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 nonverbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.

1.The writer mentioned the experiment of Frederick to __________.

A. support his idea B. introduce his topic

C. describe a new finding D. give an example of his theory

2.The purpose of Frederick’s experiment was to __________.

A. prove that children are born with the ability to speak

B. discover what language a child would speak without hearing any human speech

C. find out what role careful nursing would play in teaching a child to speak

D. prove that a child could be damaged without learning a language

3.The reason why some children are backward in speaking is most probably that ________.

A. they are not able to learn language rapidly

B. they are exposed to too much language at once

C. their mothers do not respond enough to their attempts to speak

D. their mothers are not clever enough to help them

4. If a child starts to speak later than others, he will __________ in future.

A. have a high IQ B. be less intelligent

C. be insensitive to verbal signals D. not necessarily be backward

5. Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?

A. A child is born with the ability to speak.

B. A child’s brain has a complex system which helps to connect the sight and feel of an object.

C. A child can produce his own sentences.

D. A child owes his speech ability to good nursing.

6. According to the passage, the writer agrees that__________.

A. the infants will certainly die because of lack of language.

B. all children learn their language in fixed stages

C. the child’s brain is highly selective

D. insensitivity to the child’s non-verbal signals will not affect the development of the child’s language

 

Answer 1

1.B

2.B

3.C

4.D

5.D

6.C

【解析】

試題分析: 語言是否像食物一樣是人類的一項基本需求，在生命關(guān)鍵的時候，沒有它孩子就會餓死或者受到損害呢？實驗表明這是有可能的。語言學家認為，語言在人一生中的各個階段是按固定順序發(fā)展的，如果錯過這個關(guān)鍵時期，嬰兒就不會輕松地學會語言了。

1.B推理判斷題。作者開門見山提出“語言是否像食物一樣是人類的一項基本需求，在生命關(guān)鍵的時候，沒有它孩子就會餓死或者受到損害”這一問題，接著介紹了費雷德里克二世做的實驗及結(jié)果，隨后在下文中圍繞孩子語言的習得這個話題展開行文，由此判斷作者提到這個實驗的目的是引出話題，故選B。

2.B 細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)文章首段Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent.可知他做實驗的目的是試圖發(fā)現(xiàn)如果孩子聽不到人類的語言，孩子會說什么語言，故答案選B。

3.C 細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)文章第三段內(nèi)容Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant, 可知有些孩子說話遲鈍的原因往往是在孩子大腦正處在快速吸收語言的時期，母親對嬰兒的示意和信號無動于衷，故答案選C。

4.D細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)文章第四段 but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ可知有些孩子說話晚但智商很高，所以未來未必是落后于別人，答案選D。

5.D細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)文章倒數(shù)第二段內(nèi)容可知孩子天生就具有講話的能力，而且人腦有把物體和這個詞的音聯(lián)系在一起功能，此外還會用新奇的方式對語言進行分析，并重新組合，故ABC選項內(nèi)容正確，而D選項錯誤。

6.C 細節(jié)理解題。根據(jù)文章第五段內(nèi)容And even more incredible is the young brain’s ability to pick out an order in language from the mixture of sound around him,可知嬰兒的大腦有著高度的選擇性，可以從周圍的喧鬧中聽出語言表達的某種命令，故答案選C。

考點：考查社會科學類短文閱讀。