2. 外语
  3. Languages will continue to diverge. Even if English were to become the universal language, it would still take many different fo

Languages will continue to diverge. Even if English were to become the universal language, it would still take many different fo

admin2010-05-25  53
问题      Languages will continue to diverge. Even if English were to become the universal language, it would still take many different forms. Indeed the same could happen to English as has happened to Chinese: a language of intellectuals which doesn’t vary hugely alongside a large number of variants used by local peoples.
     We will continue to teach other languages in some form, and not just for reasons of practicality, Learning a language is good for your mental health; it forces you to understand another cultural and intellectual system. So I hope British education will develop a more rational approach to the foreign languages available to students in line with their political importance. Because so many people believe it’s no longer important to know another language, I fear that time devoted to language teaching in schools may well continue to decline. But you can argue that learning another language well is more taxing than, say, learning to play chess well-- it involves sensitivity to a set of complicated rules, and also to context.
     Technology will certainly make a difference to the use of foreign languages. Computers may, for instance, alleviate the drudgery that a vast translation represents. But no one who has seen a computer translation will think it can substitute for knowledge of the different languages. A machine will always be behind the times. Still more important is the fact that no computer will ever get at the associations beyond the words associations that may not be expressed but which carry much of the meaning. In languages like Arabic that context is very important. Languages come with heavy cultural baggage too-- in French or German if you missed the cultural references behind a word you’re very likely to be missing the meaning. It will be very hard to teach all that to a computer.
     All the predictions are that English will be spoken by a declining proportion of the world’s population in the 21st century. I don’t think foreign languages will really become less important, but they might be perceived to be-- and that would in the end be a very bad thing.
Which of the following is true?
选项 A、If a language is not good for practicality, we can drop it.
B、We can understand another cultural and intellectual system by learning language.
C、Time devoted to language teaching has never declined.
D、We should spend more time in learning language than playing chess.
答案B
解析 细节理解题。由第二段中第一句“not just for reasons of practicality”可知A错．由“it forces you to..intellectual system”可知B对。由“I fear that..continue to decline”可知“Time..has been declined.”故C错。最后一句主要说Learning another language well is more taxing than learning to play chess well. 并非要在learning language上花费比playing chess更多的时间，故D错。
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