Passage A
The scene: A business meeting between Chinese and Spanish company representatives. The language spoken:English. This scenario, where people from different cultures, who speak different languages, speak English as their chosen means of communication is becoming increasingly common, so common in fact that the majority of conversations in English now take place among non-native speakers of English. It's surprising but true—roughly speaking, only one out of every four speakers of English in the world is a native speaker of the language.
This use of English by non-native speakers as the medium of communication between them has been given a name—“English as a lingua franca” (ELF). And for some years now ELF has been the subject of much discussion among English-language teaching experts, since non-native speakers conversing together must inevitably use English differently to the way native English Speakers speak it. To put it more simply, they're making mistakes.
That certainly is the traditional view. Native English speakers are the custodians of the language and speak it correctly. Foreigners speaking the language must be corrected when they make mistakes! However, a new and potentially very fruitful concept has now emerged, and that is that ELF, with all its inevitable “mistakes”, is a language in its own right. It should therefore be studied to find out how ELF speakers are communication and what new forms this language is taking. For roughly a decade research has been carried out and the results are fascinating.
The principle idea to emerge is that there are mistakes that hinder communication and mistakes that don't know one is going to misunderstand if someone makes the common mistake of saying “This is James Baker, he look after the sales department,” The omission of the s on the end look just doesn't really matter. Similarly, difficulty pronouncing the th sound in thank you is not going to prevent comprehension.
This conclusion has important implications when it comes to teaching and learning English in the classroom. If the s on the end of the verb isn't so necessary, they why teach it? Now that's revolutionary idea that fills most English-language teachers with horror. You can't desecrate the English language like that. But a weaker version of the same idea might be not to place too much importance on that s in the classroom. In other words, the task for language experts and the teacher is to work out which elements of English-language grammar, even at the lower level, can safely be skimmed over. The fact is the ELF speakers are at this moment deciding this for themselves.
Research shows that ________.
文章第一段最后一句话写到“…roughly speaking, only one out of every four speakers of English in the world is a native speaker of the language.”由此可见， 世界上讲英语的人中只有四分之一的人母语为英语， 大部分讲英语的人母语都不是英语， A 正确。
The use of English as lingua franc takes place between ________.
文章第二段第一句话写到“This use of English by non-native speakers as the medium of communication between them has been given a name—„English as a lingua franca‟(ELF)”由此可见 ELF 代表那些母语不是英语但会英语的人， D 正确。
English-language teaching experts now see ELF as ________.
文章第二段第二句话写到“…since non-native speakers conversing together must inevitably use English differently to the way native English Speakers speak it.”由此可见， ELF 和正规的英语比起来有差别， B 正确。
Research in ELF shows that ________.
文章第三段列举了在 ELF 中， 第三人称单数动词后面的 s 经常被忽略掉， 并且发 th 的音也不尽相同。 但后面作者又接着写到“The omission of the s on the end look just doesn't really matter. Similarly, difficulty pronouncing the th sound in thank you is not going to prevent comprehension.”这说明有些错误并不重要， C 正确。
English-language teachers and experts ________.
文章最后一段第六句话写到“In other words, the task for language experts and the teacher is to work out which elements of English-language grammar, even at the lower level, can safely be skimmed over.”由此可见， 英语语言教学专家应当仔细研究哪些语法规则可以被省略不教， 并确保这样的省略不会造成问题， C 正确。