2. 考研
  3. Read the following passage and answer the questions after the passage. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet Speaking two langu

Read the following passage and answer the questions after the passage. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet Speaking two langu

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问题     Read the following passage and answer the questions after the passage. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.
    This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.
    They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.
    The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function—a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.
    Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.
    The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. "Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often? You may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language," says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. "It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving. " In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals subjects with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.
    The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age, and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life.  
How does the more recent view of hi lingual ism differ mainly from the old views?
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答案The more recent view of bilingualism believes that it is helpful for improving intelligence and cognitive ability。while the old one holds that bilingualism can hinder children’s learning and intellectual development.
解析 事实细节题。第二段第一句指出，这种观点与之前的观点截然不同。第二句具体说明之前的观点，从认知的角度讲，双语会阻碍孩子的学习和智力发展。由此可知，新旧两种观点对 “双语对孩子智力和认知能力的发展上的影响”看法不同。
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