Question

Kids are far better than adults at learning how to speak multiple（多样的） languages. Research now shows that very young infants might have some of the best language skills of all.

A new study suggests that babies between 4 and 6 months old can tell the difference between two languages just by looking at the speaker’s face. They don’t need to hear word. Sometimes between 6-8 months of age, babies raised in homes where just one language is spoken lose this ability. Babies from bilingual (双语的)homes, on the other hand, keep the face-reading ability until they’re at least 8 months old.

Researchers in Canada studied 36 infants from English-speaking families. Twelve of the babies were 4 months old,12 were 6 months old, and the rest were 8 months old. Each baby sat on his or her mother’s lap and watched video clips of a woman talking. The woman was fluent in both English and French. In some clips, she read from a storybook in English. In other clips, she read in French. In all of the videos there was no sound.

After watching clip after clip of the woman reading in just one language, the babies eventually started to look away, apparently because they were bored. The researchers then showed the babies a new silent clip of the woman reading a story in the other language. At that point, the 4-month-olds and 6-month-olds started looking at the screen again. The 8-month-old,by contrast, paid no attention. That suggests that a baby’s ability to distinguish between languages get lost before 8 months of age.

“Visual information about speech may play a more critical role in language learning than previously expected,” says researcher psychologist Whitney. It’s not yet clear, she adds, which part of the speaker’s face babies are looking at for clues. Next, scientists want to see whether babies can match faces with the voices of foreign-language speakers. If babies can do this, the scientists would then like to know if this ability also declines（下降） toward the end of the first year of life.

48. What is mainly discussed in the passage ?

   A. Language teaching.

B. Language learning

C. Infants and language learning

  D Parents and language teaching

49.  What do the underlined words in the second paragraph refer to ?

A. Telling the difference between languages.

    B. Looking at their mothers’ faces

   C. Speaking different languages

D. Hearing words spoken by mothers.

50. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage ?

   A. All the infants in the study are of the same age.

   B. The infants could hear the woman’s voice while watching the videos.

   C. The stories the woman read were written in either French or German.

D. It’s still unknown how infants could tell the difference between languages.

51. Why did the 8-month-old pay no attention when the language was changed ?

   A. They had lost the ability to distinguish different languages.

B. They were too tied to open their eyes and fell asleep.

C. They couldn’t hear what the speaker was talking about.

D. They had lost the interest in bilingual speakers.

Answer 1

48C 49A 50 D 51A