题目内容

Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.
Learning is an essential process for living things to acquire necessary skills and behaviors. Scientists have al ready found that there is a critical period for learning in man and animals. Once the right time for learning a skill or a certain behaviors has passed, this skill or behavior. can never be properly learned.
That we speak our own language perfectly and the languages we learn later imperfectly also depends on learning this skill at the right time. The brain develops in such a way that it is ready to learn to speak between the ages of about ten months and ten years. Languages learned later are not spoken perfectly. The ability to speak a language is a mixed motor and sensory skill. It is necessary to hear all the sounds, the subtle differences between similar but not identical sounds, the rhythm and tone of the language. One has also to work tongue, throat, and lips to control breathing. All this has to be managed at one and the same time. From some time after birth until the age of six or seven, normal children all learn this perfectly; and without much difficulty they can learn two or even three languages at the same time, without confusing one with the other. But later, most of us cannot acquire this skill. We may learn to write and read the new language perfectly; but to acquire the right accent and the ability to speak so that no one can detect that the language is not our mother tongue hardly ever occurs.
But those of us who still want to learn foreign languages after these early milestones have been passed need not worry, for though we may not learn to speak a new language like the natives, we know from thousands of examples that we can go on learning languages beyond the age of eighty. There are so many activities adding up to the simple word" learning" that although some of the processes become less efficient with ageing of the brain, our actual experience of learning helps us in learning new materials.
Normal social and emotional development probably also needs the correct stimulating at the right time. We can observe evidence of this in those rare cases of children who have been completely neglected from birth. Sometimes illegitimate children in the country are put away in barns to conceal their existence from the neighbors. They are taught nothing, not even to be house-trained or to speak. These children then grow up mentally defective. Even if they are found and rescued by the age of four or five, it is too late; though they can be taught a lot, their speech is always inadequate and their brains never reach the standards of their brothers or sisters.
What can we learn from the first paragraph about the critical period?

A. It is a point at which the process of learning ends.
B. It is a phase which is crucial to the acquisition of a certain ability.
C. It is a phase after which we do not need to acquire a certain ability.
D. Mans and animals have a similar critical period for a certain ability.

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Living with Computer
After too long on the Net, even a phone call can be a shock. My boyfriend's Liverpudlian accent suddenly becomes hard to understand after the clarity of his words on screen; a secretary's tone seems more rejecting than I'd imagined it would be. Time itself becomes fluid - hours become minutes, and alternately seconds stretch into days. Weekends, once a highlight of my week, are now just two ordinary days.
For the last three years, since I stopped working as a producer for Charlie Rose, I have done much of my work as a tele-commuter (远程交谈者). I submit articles and edit them via E-mail and communicate with colleagues on internet mailing lists. My boyfriend lives in England, so much of our relationship is computer-mediated.
If I desired, I could stay inside for weeks without wanting anything. I can order food, and manage my money, love and work. In fact, at times I have spent as long as three weeks alone at home, going out only to get mall and buy newspapers and groceries. I watched most of the blizzard (暴风雪) of 96 on TV.
But after a while, life itself begins to feel unreal. I start to feel as though I've merged with my machines, taking data in, spitting them back out, just another node (节点) on the Net. Others on line report the same symptoms. We start to strongly dislike the outside forms of socializing. It's like attending an A. A. meeting in a bar with everyone holding a half-sipped drink. We have become the Net opponents' worst nightmare.
What first seemed like a luxury, crawling from bed to computer, not worrying about hair, and clothes and face, has become an avoidance, a lack of discipline. And once you start replacing real human contact with cyber-interaction (网上交流), coming back out of the cave can be quite difficult.
At times, I turn on the television and just leave it to chatter in the background, something that I'd never done previously. The voices of the programs soothe (安慰) me, but then I'm jarred (使感不快) by the commercials. I find myself sucked in by soap operas, or compulsively (强制性地) needing to keep up with the latest news and the weather. "Dateline," "Frontline," "Nightline,' CNN, every possible angle of every story over and over and over, even when they are of no possible use to me. Work moves from foreground to background.
Compared with the clear words of her boyfriend on screen, his accent is

A. obscure.
B. distinct.
C. unreal.
D. misleading.

A.Because they followed everything the Britons did.B.Because it tasted better than mix

A. Because they followed everything the Britons did.
Because it tasted better than mixed with butter.
C. Because it became a popular drink.
D. Because they were influenced by a woman in the upper class.

Section B
Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D.
听力原文: Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. "You've got to want to write," I say to them, "not want to be a writer."
The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. When I left a 20-year career in the US Coast Guard to become a writer, I had no prospects at all; what I did have was a friend who found me my room in a New York apartment building. It didn't even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer.
After a year or so, however, I still hadn't gotten a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat. But I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn't going to be one of those people who die wondering, what if? I would keep putting my dream to the test—even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.
(27)

A. They think writers have wealth and fame.
B. They like writing.
C. They want to enjoy loneness.
D. They follow some examples.

By saying that" to acquire the right accent.., hardly ever occurs"(Para. 2 ), the author means that ______.

A. one cannot distinguish his mother tongue from a new language
B. one cannot speak a new language in exactly the same way as the natives
C. one cannot speak a new language as fluently as the natives
D. one cannot speak a new language as correctly as the natives

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