首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Learning a language When Do We Learn a Language? Children begin learning languages at birth (infants pay attention to their
Learning a language When Do We Learn a Language? Children begin learning languages at birth (infants pay attention to their
admin
2013-02-24
15
问题
Learning a language
When Do We Learn a Language?
Children begin learning languages at birth (infants pay attention to their parents’ voices, as opposed to random noises or even other languages), and haven’t really mastered it subtleties before the age of ten years. Indeed. we never really stop learning our language. This isn’t exactly the sort of behavior (like foals walking an hour after birth) that we call ’instinct’ in animals.
Do We learn When We Don’t Have to?
But at least it’s effortless, isn’t it? Well, no, as we can see when children have a choice of languages to learn. What’s found is that, to be frank, children don’t learn a language if they can get away with not learning it.
Many an immigrant family in the U.S. intends to teach their child their native language; and for the first few years il goes swimmingly so much so that the parents worry that the child won’t learn English. Then the child goes to school, picks up English, and within a few years the worry is reversed: the child still understands his parents, but responds in English. Eventually the parents may give up, and the home language becomes English.
People’s Influence
A child is likely to end up as a fluent speaker of a language only if there are significant people in her life who speak it: a nanny who only speaks Spanish, a relative who doesn’t speak English, etc. Once a child discovers that his parents understand English perfectly well, he’s likely to give up on the home language, even in the face of strong disapproval from the parents.
It’s a myth that children learn to speak mainly from their parents. They don’t: they learn mostly from their peers. This is most easily seen among children of immigrants, whether they come from differing language backgrounds or merely different dialect areas: the children invariably come to speak the dialect of their neighborhood and school, not that of their parents. (I found a neat example of this in my college’s alumni magazine: A liberal family in Mississippi sent their daughter to the public schools, which except for her were all black. She grew up speaking fluent African-American Vernacular English. )
Do We Need Grammar?
Supporters of the ’language instinct’ make much of the fact that children learn to speak without formal instruction --- indeed, they notoriously ignore explicit corrections.
Very little of what we learn is through formal instruction. Children aren’t schooled in video games, either, yet they pick them up with the same seeming ease.
The apparent effortlessness is largely an illusion caused by psychological distance. We just don’t remember how hard it was to learn language. (In fact, there’s some studies suggesting that memory is tied to language, so that we can’t remember the language learning process. ) The perception of effortlessness should be balanced, anyway, by the universal amusement (which some cartoonists have been mining for nearly half a century) over children’s language mistakes.
Do Children Learn Faster?
One may fall back on the position that languages may be hard for children to learn, but at least they do it better than adults. This, however, turns out to be surprisingly difficult to prove. Singleton examined hundreds of studies, and found them resoundingly ambiguous. Quite a few studies, in fact, find that adult learners progress faster than children. Even in phonetics, sometimes tile last stronghold of the kids-learn-free position, there are studies finding that adults are better at recognizing and producing foreign sounds.
Now, I think Singleton misses a key point in understanding this discrepancy: the studies he reviews compare children vs. adults who are learning languages. That’s quite reasonable, and indeed it’s hard to imagine an alternative approach, but the two groups are not really comparable! All children have to learn at least one language; but few adults do. So the studies compare the situation of all children with that of the minority of adults motivated to formally learn other languages.
Why?
Why do children learn languages well, when even adults who want to learn them have trouble with them? Innate abilities aside, children have a number of powerful advantages:
They can devote almost their full time to it. Adults consider half an hour’s study a day to be onerous.
Their motivation is intense. Adults rarely have to spend much of their time in the company of people they need to talk to but can’t children can get very little of what they want without learning language(s).
Their peers are nastier. Embarrassment is a prime motivating factor for human beings (I owe this insight to Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind, but it was most memorably expressed by David Berlinski (in Black Mischief, p. 129), who noted that of all emotions, from rage to depression to first love, only embarrassment can recur, decades later, with its full original intensity). Dealing with a French waiter is nothing compared with the vicious reception in store for a child who speaks funny.
If adults could be placed in a similar situation, they might well learn languages as readily as children. The closest such situation is cross- cultural marriage. And indeed, this works quite well. My wife, for instance, a native Spanish speaker who came here in her late 20s, has learned exceptional English, since we speak it at home. By contrast, some of her Spanish-speaking friends of the same age, married to other Spanish speakers, speak English haltingly and with a strong accent.
Some studies say that adults are better at learning phonetics than children.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
A
解析
Some studies say that adults are better at learning phonetics than children.线索词为phonetics,定位到文章第8段第5句话,发现符合原文,则正确答案Y。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/ktu7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Theholidaysareatimeforeating:piesatThanksgiving,chocolatesforAdventandoverflowinggiftbasketsofcookiesandcand
Australia’sforeignlanguageskillsareindecline,VoiceofAmericahasreported.Newfiguresshowthatonly13%ofhighschool
Intimesofeconomiccrisis,Americansturntotheirfamiliesforsupport.IftheGreatDepressionisanyguide,wemayseeadr
A、Inthecitygarage.B、Inaneighboringtown.C、AttheGreenvillecenter.D、Atapublicparkinglot.A短文最后提到,Louis的车因停错了位置,被警察拖
A、Sheusuallygoeshomeforlunch.B、Shespendsherlunchtimeshopping.C、Shelikestospendherlunchtimeatthelibrary.D、S
YadinneededhundredsofpeopletohelphimbecausethepalaceofMasadawashugeandtheworkwasdifficult.Wallpainting,ba
Ihavelearned,oftenthehardway,thatthereareafewsimplerulesabouthowtomakelifeeasierbothbeforeandafteryour【
A、Becauseitwasattheseaside.B、Becauseofitsoldstyleofarchitecture.C、Becauseofthebeautifulgardeninfrontofit.D
假如你是校学生会主席.你们学校的一名叫李明的同学得了白血病(leukemia),请你写一份倡议书,为这位同学捐助。你的倡议书应该包括如下内容:1.介绍这位同学的病情和家庭情况2.这位同学目前的困难3.需要捐助及联系方式
A、Histravels.B、Hisshortstories.C、Hiswealth.D、Hisfamily.A主旨题。解答该题可用排除法,文章提到了马克·吐温的写作,但未具体到他的短篇故事,至于他的财富和家庭则更少提及。英语中的tra
随机试题
集中体现《五代史伶官传序》中心旨意的一组反义词是()
患儿男性,7岁,因“溺水3小时,呼吸困难2小时”入院。3小时前鱼塘边玩耍时意外跌入鱼塘中,全身没入水中5~7分钟。救起时颜面青紫,立即予拍背、人工呼吸约2分钟,吐出少量污水后呼之有反应,1小时左右送至当地二级医院,予吸痰、吸氧、静脉推注呋塞米15mg。患儿
A.慢性浅表性胃炎B.急性胆囊炎C.急性水肿型胰腺炎(轻症)D.急性坏死型胰腺炎(重症)E.慢性胰腺炎可出现夜盲症的是
流脑患儿,昏迷,一侧瞳孔扩大,紧急处理措施是( )。
简述小学生品德培养的常用方法。
下图为北京时间2015年9月15日8时亚洲局部地区地面气压场(单位:hPa)分布图,读图完成下面各题。图中甲、乙两地最大气压差最接近()。
就语言形式方面而言,“所有的人都是有思想的”这句话的意思仅仅是“如果是人的话,那么一定有思想”,这句话并没有断定“人是存在的”。以下哪个语句最有力地支持了上述断定?
有以下程序#includemain(){inta=2,b;b=a<<2;printf("%d\n",b);}程序运行后的输出结果是
Publicgoodsarethosecommoditiesfromwhoseenjoymentnobodycanbe(41)excluded.Everybodyisfreeto(42)thebenefits
Overthepastcentury,thecompositionofthehumangenepool______appreciably.
最新回复
(
0
)