2. 外语
  3. Languages will continue to diverse. Even if English were to become the universal language, it would still take many different fo

Languages will continue to diverse. Even if English were to become the universal language, it would still take many different fo

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问题     Languages will continue to diverse. Even if English were to become the universal language, it would still take many different forms. Indeed the same could happen to English as has happened to Chinese: a language of intellectuals which doesn’t vary hugely alongside a large number of variations used by local peoples.
    We will continue to teach other languages in some form, and not just for reasons of practical use. Learning a language is good for your mental health; it forces you to understand another cultural and intellectual system. So I hope British education will develop a more rational approach to the foreign languages available to students in line with their political importance. Because so many people believe it’s no longer important to know another language, I fear that time devoted to language teaching in schools may well continue to decline. But you can argue that learning another language well is more exhausting than, say, learning to play chess well—it involves sensitivity to a set of complicated rules, and also to context.
    Technology will certainly make a difference to the use of foreign languages. Computers may, for instance, relieve the hard work that a vast translation represents. But no one who has seen a computer translation will think it can substitute for live knowledge of the different languages. A machine will always be behind the times. Still more important is the fact that no computer will ever get at the associations beyond the words associations that may not be expressed but which carry much of the meaning. In languages like Arabic that context is very important Languages come with heavy cultural baggage too—in French or German if you miss the cultural references behind a word you’re very likely to be missing the meaning. It will be very hard to teach all that to a computer.
    All the predictions are that English will be spoken by a declining proportion of the world’s population in the 21st century. I don’t think foreign languages will really become less important, but they might be perceived to be—and that would in the end be—a very bad thing.
The author thinks it would be a bad thing if_____.
选项 A、English is spoken by fewer people in the 21st century
B、foreign languages become less important in the 21st century
C、English is not as important as foreign languages in the 21st century
D、foreign languages are regarded as less important in the 21st century
答案D
解析 事实细节题。本题考查含有插入成分的句子的理解。最后一段最后一句中的a very bad thing是两个不同句子中的表语，应把句子重新整理为“but they might be perceived to be a very bad thing，andthat would in the end be a very bad thing too”，而且只有选项D中的regard表达了perceive的意思，因此可以确定选项D正确。
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