Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language, but few people ar

admin2013-01-12  18

问题    Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language, but few people are even moderately proficient at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this, some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce, and consequently never set about tackling it in the right way. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is a skill one that needs careful training of special kind, and one that cannot be acquired by just leaving it to take care of itself. I think even teachers of language while recognizing the importance of a good accent, tend to neglect, in their practical teaching, the branching of study concerned with speaking the language. So the first point I want to make is that English pronunciation must be taught, the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to this, and by his whole attitude to the subject should get the student to feel that here is a matter worthy of receiving his close attention. So, there should be occasions when other aspects of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place. Apart from this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher: the first, knowledge, the second, technique.
   It is important that the teacher should be in possession of the necessary information. This can generally be obtained from books. It is possible to get from books some idea of the mechanics of speech, and of what we call general phonetic theory. It is also possible in this way to get a clear mental picture of the relationship between the sounds of different languages, between the speech habits of English people and those, say, of your students. Unless the teacher has such picture, any comments he may make on his students’ pronunciation are superficial.
What does the writer actually say about pronouncing foreign languages?

选项 A、Only a few people are really proficient.
B、No one is really an expert in the skill.
C、There aren’t many people who are even fairly good.
D、There are even some people who are moderately proficient.

答案C

解析 从“but few people are even moderately proficient at pronouncing foreign languages”可知关键是对“few”一词的理解。它的含义是“几乎没有”,所以并不是完全没有人精通外语的发音,只是只有很少的人能做到。另外,“even moderately proficient”,指即使能达到中等程度。答案A的only一词来修饰a few,就是一种强调语气,表明仅仅有一些人真正精通,“really”的程度夸大了。而B说没有一个人精通明显不对。C说没有许多人真正精通,言下之意是还是有相当一部分人精通的,程度上用“fairly”,与原文相符,所以正确。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Xl9O777K
0

最新回复(0)