I don’t think I will agree ____ you ______this point.

Don’t talk round the question; come             to the point.

Language learning begins with listening.Children are greatly different in the amount of listening they do before they start speaking,and later starters are often long listeners. Most children will“obey”spoken instructions some time before they can speak,though the word“obey”is hardly accurate as a description of the eager and delighted cooperation usually shown by the child.Before they can speak,many children will also ask questions by gesture and by making questioning noises.

Any attempt to study the development from the noises babies make to their first spoken words leads to considerable difficulties.It is agreed that they enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months one or two noises sort themselves as particularly expressive as delight,pain,friendliness,and so on.But since these can’t be said to show the baby’s intention to communicate,they can hardly be regarded as early forms of language.It is agreed,too,that from about three months they play with sounds for enjoyment,and that by six months they are able to add new words to their store.This selfimitation(模仿) leads on to deliberate(有意的) imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people.The problem then arises as to the point at which one can say that these imitations can be considered as speech.

It is a problem we need to get out teeth into.The meaning of a word depends on what a particular person means by it in a particular situation and it is clear that what a child means by a word will change as he gains more experience of the world.Thus the use at seven months of“mama”as a greeting for his mother cannot be dismissed as a meaningless sound simply because he also uses it at other times for his father,his dog,or anything else he likes.Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself,I doubt,however whether anything is gained when parents take advantage of this ability in an attempt to teach new sounds.

1.Before children start speaking        .

2.Children who start speaking late        .

3.The problem of deciding at what point a baby’s imitations can be considered as speech        .

4.The speaker wants to tell us that        .

Dorothea Shaw is 71 years old and nearly blind, and she chose to live alone far away from people. She lives in Belize — a county the size of Wales with a population only that of Swansea. Her home is at Gales Point, a tiny village which can be reached only by sea or air; after a 10-mile walk into the hills one finally reaches a piece of land and two small houses so hidden in the thick over-grown forest that only a handful of people know Dorothea is there.

She lives happily and totally alone – growing her vegetables, looking after her trees and dogs, cats and chickens. Once a month or so an old friend passes by with her food supplies and letters-usually including a letter from her sister in Scunthorpe and some bits of clothing from friends in Canada. Sometimes a local man will come and cut wood for her and a group of British soldiers will come across her and be greeted with the offer of a cup of coffee.

At night she lies in her tiny sleeping room with the dogs on the floor, the cats on the table near the typewriter and one of the hens settled down in a corner of the bookshelf, and listens for hours to any Spanish, English, German or French broadcasts she can find on her radio. Sometimes she gets lonely but most of the time the animals and the radio are company enough.

But recently the very things that she had tried to get free from so well have begun to catch up with her. The peace of the forest has been destroyed by the noise of earth-moving machines not many miles away. What she once only heard of distantly on the radio is now on her doorstep. Things began to change three years ago. The new main north-south road in Belize was cut through the forest only four or five miles away. “Now more people know I’m here.” She says. “I feel more and more uneasy each day.”

1.Dorothea’s small houses ________.    

2.Dorothea lives in the tiny village because ________.

3. Dorothea doesn’t get lonely since she has _______ with her.

4.Dorothea spends a lot of time __________.

Language learning begins with listening.Children are greatly different in the amount of listening they do before they start speaking,and later starters are often long listeners. Most children will“obey”spoken instructions some time before they can speak,though the word“obey”is hardly accurate as a description of the eager and delighted cooperation usually shown by the child.Before they can speak,many children will also ask questions by gesture and by making questioning noises.

Any attempt to study the development from the noises babies make to their first spoken words leads to considerable difficulties.It is agreed that they enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months one or two noises sort themselves as particularly expressive as delight,pain,friendliness,and so on.But since these can’t be said to show the baby’s intention to communicate,they can hardly be regarded as early forms of language.It is agreed,too,that from about three months they play with sounds for enjoyment,and that by six months they are able to add new words to their store.This selfimitation(模仿) leads on to deliberate(有意的) imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people.The problem then arises as to the point at which one can say that these imitations can be considered as speech.

It is a problem we need to get out teeth into.The meaning of a word depends on what a particular person means by it in a particular situation and it is clear that what a child means by a word will change as he gains more experience of the world.Thus the use at seven months of“mama”as a greeting for his mother cannot be dismissed as a meaningless sound simply because he also uses it at other times for his father,his dog,or anything else he likes.Playful and meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself,I doubt,however whether anything is gained when parents take advantage of this ability in an attempt to teach new sounds.

Before children start speaking         .

  A.they need equal amount of listening

  B.they need different amounts of listening

  C.they are all eager to cooperate with the adults by obeying spoken instructions

  D.they can’t understand and obey the adult’s oral instructions

Children who start speaking late         .

  A.may have problems with their listening

  B.probably do not hear enough language spoken around them

  C.usually pay close attention to what they hear

  D.often take a long time in learning to listen properly

The problem of deciding at what point a baby’s imitations can be considered as speech         .

  A.is important because words have different meanings for different people

  B.is not especially important because the changeover takes place gradually

  C.is one that should be properly understood because the meaning of words changes with age

  D.is one that should be completely ignored(忽略) because children’s use of words is often meaningless

The speaker wants to tell us that         .

  A.parents can never hope to teach their children new sounds

  B.children no longer imitate people after they begin to speak

  C. even after they have learnt to speak,children still enjoy imitating

  D. children who are good at imitating learn new words more quickly