2. 外语
  3. In a wealthy neighbourhood in Seoul, anxious parents drag frightened toddlers into Dr Nam Woo’s office and demand that he operat

In a wealthy neighbourhood in Seoul, anxious parents drag frightened toddlers into Dr Nam Woo’s office and demand that he operat

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问题     In a wealthy neighbourhood in Seoul, anxious parents drag frightened toddlers into Dr Nam Woo’s office and demand that he operate on the children’s tongues. It is a simple procedure: Just a snip (剪开) on a membrane and the tongue is supposedly longer, more flexible and—some South Koreans believe—better able to pronounce such notorious tongue-teasers for Asians as the English word "rice" so it doesn’t sound like "lice".
    "Parents are eager to have their children speak English, and so they want to have them get the operation," said Nam, who performs about 10 procedures a month, almost all on children younger than 5.
    In this competitive and education-obsessed society, fluent and unaccented English is the top goal of language study and is pursued with fervor.
    It is not unusual for 6-month-old infants to be put in front of the television for as long as five hours a day to watch instruction videos, or for 7-year-olds to be sent out after dinner for English cram courses.
    South Korean parents will spend the equivalent of a month’s salary on monthly tuition at English-language kindergartens and up to U.S.＄50 an hour for tutors. Between the after-school courses, flashcards, books and videos, English instruction is estimated to be a U.S. ＄3-billion-a-year industry—and that doesn’t include the thousands of children sent abroad to hone their skills.
    In another display of linguistic zeal, the Seoul city government recently set up a hotline for citizens to call if they see English spelling or grammar mistakes on public signs. "Learning English is almost the national religion," said Jonathan Hilts, host of a popular English-language talk sow on South Korea’s Educational Broadcasting System.
    The most controversial aspect of the English craze is the tongue surgery, which critics say is unnecessary. No statistics exist in South Korea about the number of such operations, which usually are done in private clinics. However, doctors say the procedure’s popularity has soared with the boom in English instruction. Linguists sneer at the idea that South Koreans’ tongues are too short to speak English properly.
    "Since Westerners are taller they might have longer tongues. But this operation lengthens the tongue by only a millimeter or two and that has nothing to with it. The real problem for South Koreans, as for Japanese, is that their own languages make no distinction between Ls and Rs, so their ears cannot detect the difference."
According to some linguists, the reason why South Koreans can’t pronounce "Rice" correctly is that ______.
选项 A、South Koreans do not care much about English pronunciation
B、their physical disability keeps them from doing so
C、Korean language does not include the phonetic sounds "L" and "R"
D、they are deaf to the different pronunciation of some letters
答案D
解析 文章第1段引出谈论的话题“韩国父母让孩子做舌头整形手术以让孩子更好地发一些英语单词如rice的音”，而在文章最后一段，语言学家给出的解释说明了父母的错误认识“真正的问题是韩语中L和R的发音没区别，所以他们的耳朵听不出差异(自然就发不出音)”。所以选D。
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