题目内容

The English, as a race,have the reputation of being very different from all other nationalities. Including their close neighbors, the French, Belgians and Dutch. It is claimed that living on an island separated from the rest of Europe has much to do with it. Whatever the reasons it may be fairly stated that the Englishman has developed many attitudes and habits which distinguished him from other nationalities.
Broadly speaking, the Englishman is a quiet, shy, reserved person who is fully relaxed only among people who knows very well. When he meets with strangers of foreigners, he often seems uneasy, even embarrassed. You have only to witness a commuter train any morning or evening to see the truth of this, serious-looking businesses and women sit reading their newspaper or dozing in a corner, no one speaks. In fact, to do so would seem most usual. An English wit, pretending to be giving advice to overseas visitors, once suggested, “on entering a railway compartment shake hands with all the passengers. ”Needless to say, he was not being serious. There is an unwritten but clearly understood code of behavior. which, if bro ken, makes the person immediately the object of suspicion.
It is a well-known fact that the English have an obsession with their weather and that, given half a chance, they will talk about it in length. Some people argue that it is because English weather forecast is undependable, as a result, English weather is a source of interest to everyone. This may be so. Certainly Englishmen cannot have much faith in the meteorological experts-the weathermen-who, after promising glorious, sunny weather for the following day, are often proved wrong when an anti-cyclone or as inaccurate as the weathermen in his prediction. This helps to explain the seemingly odd sight of an Englishman leaving home on a bright, sunny summer morning with a raincoat slung over an arm and an umbrella in his hand. So variable is the weather that by lunch time there could be thundering.
The overseas visitors may be excused for showing surprise at the number of references to weather that the English make to each other in the course of a single day. Very often conventional greetings are re placed by comments on the weather. “Nice day,isn’ t?” “Beautiful ! ”may well be heard instead of “Good morning”, how are you? “Although the foreigner may consider this exaggerated and comic, it is worthwhile pointing out that it could be used to his advantage. If he wants to start a conversation with an Englishman (or woman) but is at a loss to know where to begin he would do well to mention the state of the weather.It is a safe subject, which will encourage even the most reserved Englishmen to enter into a conversation.
What is the reason that the Englishmen enter into a conversation?

A. Because the English have developed many different attitudes and habits.
Because living on an island separated from the rest of Europe has much to do with it.
C. Because the English are quite shy and reserved.
D. Because an Englishman often seems uneasy, even embarrassed when he meets with strangers or foreigners.

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All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than language deprivation here. What was missing was good mothering, in the first year of life especially; the capacity to survive is seriously affected.
Today no such drastic deprivation exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for that is that the mother is in sensitive to the cues and signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to mop up language rapidly. There are critical times, it seems, when children learn more readily. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes, and they might never learn so easily again, A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time, but finds the process slow and hard once the critical stage has passed.
Linguists suggest that speech milestones are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ (Intelligence Quotient). At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style. rather than grammar.
Recent evidence suggests that all infants are born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man's brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a teddy bear with the sound pattern "teddy-bear". And even more incredible is the young brain's ability to pick out an order in language from the hubbub of sound around him, to analyse to combine and recombine the parts of a language in novel ways.
But speech has to be triggered, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child where the mother recognizes the cues and signals in the child's babbling, clinging, grasping, crying, smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signal. Sensitivity to the child's non-verbal cues is essential to the growth and development of language.
Frederick Ⅱ's experiment was "drastic" because______.

A. he wanted to prove that children are born with the ability to speak.
B. he ignored the importance of mothering to the infant.
C. he was unkind to the nurses.
D. he wanted to see if the children could die before they reached the age of one.

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