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  3. Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent ye

Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent ye

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问题    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 bilingual-ism 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 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.
   A collective evidence from a number of 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 tiling to another and holding information in mind, like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.
   And 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 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.
We can learn from the first paragraph that being bilingual______.
选项 A、can make you more intelligent
B、can improve your behavioral competence
C、may keep you physically healthy in old age
D、can help you talk with more people
答案A
解析 细节题。根据题干关键词定位到文章第一段，A项“拥有双语可以使你更聪明”，其中more intelligent是对该段第三句中smarter的同义替换，故A项正确。B项中的behavioral competence意为“行为能力”，其整体意思是“双语可以提高你的行为能力”。该段第四句后半部分指出“双语可以提高你的认知能力”，由此可知B项错误。C项意为“双语可使你在老年保持身体健康”，然而该段第四句指出“双语保护你抗击老年痴呆症”，由此可知C项夸大了具体细节，故错误。D项意为“双语可使你和更多的人交谈”，这仅是双语的一个优势，然而并不是最重要的优势。且该段的中心思想是：双语使人更聪明。故本题选A。
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