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."
The underlined word "hone" in paragraph 4 most probably means ______.
选项 A、sharpen
B、grind
C、boost
D、acquire
答案C
解析 “hone”的原意是“用磨刀石打磨”，语境中是与skills搭配，所以可引申为“boost”。
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