填空题 Babies begin to develop language skills long before they begin speaking. Adults have a (1) time learning new languages as they grow older, but (2) have the ability to learn any language easily. Such studies show that, up to about (3) months of age, babies can recognize all the sounds that make up all the languages in the world. Most kids speak in full sentences by age (4) Children begin (5) only to the sounds of the language they hear the most.
About (6) sounds make up the languages spoken around the globe, but not every language uses every sound. To a native Japanese speaker, the letters (7) and (8) sound identical. So a Japanese speaker cannot tell "row" from "low," or "rake" from "lake. "
By around age 7, a baby's brain has disposed of all the (9) connections that the infant was born with. So, if you don't start studying a foreign language until (10) school, you must (11) against years of brain development, and progress can be (12) . A 12-year-old's brain has to work much (13) to forge language connections than an infant's brain does.
Learning the baby's brain might also help scientists design (14) that learn languages as easily as babies do. Useful as computers are, they cannot (15) and (16) like people do.
Researchers have found that it is far (17) for a language learner to talk with people who speak the language than to rely on (18) CDs and DVDs with recorded conversations.
When infants watched someone speaking a foreign language on (19) , they had a completely (20) experience than they did if they watched the same speaker in real life.