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 the
Learning a language When Do We Learn a Language? Children begin learning languages at birth(infants pay attention to the
admin
2013-06-17
59
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 the 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 it 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 the 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.
选项
A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案
B
解析
The passage gives a general explanation about the benefits of a cross-cultural marriage.这是一个主旨题,通过文章题目发现主旨应该落脚于language,而cross-cultural marriage与language没有必然联系,所以该题正确答案N。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/wrM7777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
With950millionpeople,IndiarankssecondtoChinaamongthemostpopulouscountries.ButsinceChina【C1】______afamily-planni
PresidentBushhasproposedtoincreasethestudyofforeignlanguagesinAmericanschools.ThenewplaniscalledtheNatio
PresidentBushhasproposedtoincreasethestudyofforeignlanguagesinAmericanschools.ThenewplaniscalledtheNatio
Thereareonlytwowaystogatherinformationfromhumansubjectsaboutwhattheyarecurrentlydoing,thinking,orfeeling.On
A、Thebestrelationshipbetweenco-workers.B、Athirdwayofaccomplishinggoals.C、Usefulinformationtobesharedamongco-wor
Internethaslongbeenthefocusofresearch.Recently,alargestudy【C1】______thatotherwisehealthyteenagersaremuchmore【C2
Emmawasafraidtoanswerhermother’sphonecallatmidnight.Atfirst,Emma______herfatherbecauseshethoughthewasfait
Learninghowtowriteisliketakingacourseinpublicspeaking.I’daskwhetheranyoneinclasshadevertakensuchacourse.
Inan【B1】______tobringtogetheramateurandprofessionalracingactivities,theNationalCyclingFederation(NCF)andtheFedera
A、Bywatchingitthroughthekeyhole.B、Bywaitingoutsidethedoor.C、Bykneelingdownatthedoor.D、Byputtingitinasmall
随机试题
行列式(已知abcd=1)=().
自耦变压器的绕组的一部分是高压侧和低压侧所共有的,另一部分只属于高压侧,通常用在电压变比不大的地方,具体有体积小、重量轻等优点。()
男孩,5岁,因颈前上方正中肿物手术,术后2个月自伤口处有一小口流透明黏液。术后症状如何解释
A.稽留热B.弛张热C.间歇热D.波状热E.回归热霍奇金病的热型是
下述哪组疾病属于监测管理的传染病
46岁妇女,月经周期延长,经量增多及经期延长。此次月经量多且持续12天,妇科检查子宫稍大稍软。本例有效的止血措施选择
【2009年第54题】如图3-437所示刚架在荷载作用下,哪种弯矩图是不可能出现的?
一名年轻的老师第一次走上讲台,这是一个学校普遍认为的差班。刚走向讲台,一个男生就站起来问道:“老师,您喜欢不喜欢差生?”老师没有直接回答,反而微笑地看着他,问道:“你会不会把自己心爱的旧玩具丢掉?”男生想了一会,回答道:“应当不会,我会好好珍藏的。”老师面
WhichofthefollowingsentencesindicatesSUGGESTION?
It’sdifficulttoimaginetheseaeverrunningoutoffish.It’ssovast,sodeep,so【B1】______.Unfortunately,it’snotbottoml
最新回复
(
0
)