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.  
What does the fact that interference is now seen as a blessing in disguise mean?
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答案The interfere forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.
解析 事实细节题。a blessing in disguise是常用习语，指因祸得福。第三段第一句明确指出，大脑中两种语言都起作用，相互间有干扰。但第二句用But转折，说这是“因祸得福”。紧接着第三句指明原因，这种干扰会迫使大脑解决内部冲突、强化认知。由此可知，之前认为的“双语干扰”实际上可以促进大脑认知能力的发展。
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