单选题 Whether to teach young children a second language is disputed among teachers, researchers and pushy parents. On the one hand, acquiring a new tongue is said to be far easier when young. On the other, teachers complain that children whose parents speak a language at home that is different from the one used in the classroom sometimes struggle in their lessons and are slower to reach linguistic milestones. Would a 15-month-old child, they wonder, not be better off going to music classes?
A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may help resolve this question by getting to the point of what is going on in a bilingual child’s brain, how a second language affects the way he thinks, and thus in what circumstances being bilingual may be helpful. Agnes Kovacs and Jacques Mehler at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste say that some aspects of the cognitive development of infants raised in a bilingual household must be undergoing acceleration in order to manage which of the two languages they are dealing with.
The aspect of cognition in question is part of what is termed the brain’s “executive function”. This allows people to organise, plan, prioritise activity, shift their attention from one thing to another and suppress habitual responses. Bilingualism is common in Trieste which, though Italian, is almost surrounded by Slovenia. So Dr. Kovacs and Dr. Mehler looked at 40 “preverbal” seven-month-olds, half raised in monolingual and half in bilingual households, and compared their performances in a task that needs control of executive function.
First, the babies were trained to expect the appearance of a puppet on a screen after they had heard a set of meaningless words invented by the researchers. Then the words, and the location of the puppet, were changed. When this was done, the babies who speak only one language had difficulty overcoming their learnt response, even when the researchers gave them further clues that a switch had taken place. The bilingual babies, however, found it far easier to switch their attention — counteracting the previously learnt, but no longer useful response.
Monitoring languages and .keeping them separate is part of the brain’s executive function, so these findings suggest that even before a child can speak, a bilingual environment may speed up that function’s development. Before rushing your offspring into bilingual kindergartens, though, there are a few cautions. For one thing, these extraordinary cognitive benefits have been demonstrated so far only in “crib” bilinguals — those living in households where two languages are spoken routinely. The researchers speculate that it might be the fact of having to learn two languages in the same setting that requires greater use of executive function. So whether those benefits apply to children who learn one language at home, and one at school, remains unclear.

单选题 Who are probably pushing young children to study a new language?
[A] Parents. [B] Teachers.
[C] Researchers. [D] Children themselves.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[设题点] 首段，尾段
[解析] 推理判断题。文章首句提到，孩子是否该接受双语教学在老师、研究者和望子成龙的家长(pushy parents)之间还存在争议。首段第三句提出了老师的抱怨，认为双语环境给孩子在学校的语言学习造成了困难。文章尾段，研究者发表自己的观点：“这对于在家学习一门语言，在校学习另一门语言的孩子是否会有益处，还不是很明确”。可见，除家长之外，老师和研究者都提出了质疑或反对意见。所以本题答案为[A]。[C]项的“孩子们自己”显然不符合逻辑。

单选题 What is going on in a bilingual child’s brain according to the new study?
[A] The executive function is being developed more slowly.
[B] The executive function is being developed more rapidly.
[C] The aural nerve centre is being developed more slowly.
[D] The aural nerve centre is being developed more rapidly.

单选题 How does a second language affect the way a young child behaves according to the new study?
[A] It shortens his focus time on anything learnt.
[B] It always switches his attention to new information.
[C] It makes him able to predict the appearance of a person.
[D] It makes him far easier to overcome his learnt response.

单选题 The new study concluded that being bilingual is found helpful
[A] only when you use a foreign language to talk with foreigners.
[B] only when you have to learn two languages in the same setting.
[C] only when you speak different languages in school and at home.
[D] only when you speak foreign languages both in school and at home.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】[设题点] 人物引言处
[解析] 事实细节题。本题问在什么情况下双语环境才有益。首先观察四个选项。[A]提到的talk with foreigners在文中未提及，所以可以排除。[C]提到，“在家和在学校说两种不同的语言”，而文章第一段，已经有老师抱怨这种模式的缺点，很显然[C]也错误。[D]中的“在家和在学校都说外语”，这样就不再是双语环境了，更无处谈起双语环境的益处。只有[B]“在同样的环境中必须学习两种语言”是正确的。文章举了意大利的一个城市“的里雅斯特”为例，这里的家庭大部分都是双语环境，所以孩子们不得不学习两种语言。文章最后一段倒数第二句，研究者也给出了自己的观点“只有在不得不在同一环境中学习两种语言的情况下”。因此，本题答案为[B]。