Parents should not assume that young children’s natural language abilities will lead to true grown-up language skills without

admin2022-01-20  70

问题   Parents should not assume that young children’s natural language abilities will lead to true grown-up language skills without a good deal of effort. Erika Hoff, a developmental psychologist who is a professor at Florida Atlantic University and the lead author of a 2015 review article on bilingual development, said: "For everybody trying to raise a bilingual child, whatever your background and reason, it’ s very important to realize that acquiring a language requires massive exposure to that language."
    Pediatricians routinely advise parents to talk as much as possible to their young children, to read to them and sing to them. Part of the point is to increase their language exposure, a major concern even for children growing up with only one language. And in order to foster language development, the exposure has to be person-to-person; screen time doesn’t count for learning language in young children—even one language—though kids can learn content and vocabulary from educational screen time later on. "For bilingual development, the child will need exposure to both languages," Dr. Hoff said, "and that’s really difficult in a monolingual environment, which is what the U.S. is."
    "A child who is learning two languages will have a smaller vocabulary in each than a child who is only learning one; there are only so many hours in the day, and you’re either hearing English or Spanish," Dr. Hoff said. The children will be fine, though, she said. They may mix the languages, but that doesn’t indicate confusion. "Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it’s a sign of language ability," she said.
    Dr. Hoff works in South Florida, where there is a very educated and affluent population raising children in Spanish and English. "The children start out as baby bilinguals, but the older they get, the more English overtakes Spanish," she said. "The ones who are successful bilinguals as adults are still much better in English than they are in Spanish—they didn’ t go to school in Spanish, they don’ t read books in Spanish, and when you actually measure the size of their vocabularies, or the grammar they understand, or the coherence of the narrative they produce, they are not as proficient as they are in English." Parents will need to be mindful about introducing the child to literacy in that language. They will need to be thoughtful about ways they will encourage the child to maintain the language.
The children in Dr. Hoff’ s working place of South Florida are________.

选项 A、more proficient in English than the adults
B、better at English than Spanish when growing up
C、born into miserable families
D、unwilling to study Spanish

答案B

解析 细节题。根据题干关键词定位到文章第四段。A项意为“孩子比成人更精通英语”,该段第二、三句分别意为“孩子起初是双语,但随着年纪渐长,他们的英语水平会日益超过西班牙语”,即便成为优秀的成人双语者,他们的英语水平还是会比西班牙语高得多。由此可知,作者并不是拿孩子的英语跟成人的英语进行对比,而是孩子长大成人后英语水平高于西班牙语,故A项错误。C项意为孩子“出生在悲惨的家庭”,其与该段首句中educated and affluent(受教育且富裕的)相悖,故错误。D项意为“孩子不愿意学习西班牙语”。虽然文中提到孩子“没去过用西班牙语授课的学校,没读过西班牙语书籍”,但并不意味着他们不愿意学习西班牙语,故错误。B项意为孩子“长大后更擅长英语”,符合文意。故本题选B。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/gni4777K
0

最新回复(0)