Since the late 1930’s the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the United States has been working to promote native language literacy amo

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问题     Since the late 1930’s the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the United States has been working to promote native language literacy among Indians. Indians were to be taught to read and write in their native language before being taught English. Studies in many cultures around the world demonstrate that children learn to read best in their mother tongue. Bilingual reading books and other educational materials were prepared in Navaho, Hopi, Siouan, Pueblo, and Papago languages. The difficulties were tremendous because many American Indian languages are distinctively different in structure from all other languages in the world. They do not have "words" in the sense that other languages do—as independent meaningful sound sequences that combine into "sentences". Their "sentences" are made by combining prefixes, infixes, and suffixes into what looks like one long word but is essentially the equivalent of our sentence. It is impossible, in other words, to make an Indian utterance that is not a sentence. In our sense, Indian languages do not have parts of speech, conjugations etc. The sentence is the smallest structure available to speakers of the language. Therefore bridging the translation gap between English and such language is a massive feat.
    In most cases, Indian children need to be bilingual though not necessarily be literate. That is, they need to speak their native language to participate fully in their home and tribal affairs. But, they do not need to read and write that language. On the other hand, they also need a reading, writing, and speaking knowledge of English, not only to get their due in this country but, ironically, also to preserve their heritage.
In the first sentence "literacy" means______.

选项 A、freedom
B、concerning literature
C、quality
D、being able to read and/or write

答案D

解析 这是一道词汇题。解答词汇题的关键是要结合文章中上下文提供的信息和对句子结构进行细致的分析。“literacy”一词出现在文中第一段第一句中。我们不难看出,接下来一句是对第一句中“to promote native language literacy among Indians”的解释,即“在印第安人学习英语之前,先教会他们用本民族的语言进行阅读和写作”。所以,这里“literacy”一词相当于“being able to read and write”,表示读写能力。本题的答题技巧就是利用英语文章中常用的“restatement skill”,即重申法。这种方法就是在下文中换一种方式对上文的内容重新进行解释。
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