hce_isu
114年
英文
第 37 題
📖 題組：
IV. Reading Comprehension: Choose the best answer to complete each sentence. Article 1 Infants are born as scientists, constantly interacting with and questioning the world around them. However, as any good scientist knows, simply making observations is not sufficient; a large part of learning is dependent on being able to communicate ideas, observations, and feelings with others. Though most infants do not produce discernible words until around age one or one-and-a-half, they begin gaining proficiency in their native languages long before that. In fact, many linguists agree that a newborn baby’s brain is already pre-programmed for language acquisition, meaning that it’s as natural for a baby to talk as it is for a dog to dig. According to psycholinguist Anne Cutler, an infant’s language acquisition actually begins well before birth. At only one day old, newborns have demonstrated the ability to recognize the voices and rhythms heard during their last trimester in the muffled confines of the womb. In general, infants are more likely to attend to a specific voice stream if they perceive it as more familiar than other streams. Newborns tend to be especially partial to their mother’s voice and her native language, as opposed to another woman or another language. For example, when an infant is presented with a voice stream spoken by his mother and a background stream delivered by an unfamiliar voice, he will effortlessly attend to his mother while ignoring the background stream. Therefore, by using these simple yet important cues, and others like them, infants can easily learn the essential characteristics and rules of their native language. However, it is important to note that an infant’s ability to learn from the nuances of her mother’s speech is predicated upon her ability to separate that speech from the sounds of the dishwasher, the family dog, the bus stopping on the street outside, and, quite possibly, other streams of speech, like a newscaster on the television down the hall or siblings playing in an adjacent room. Infants are better able to accomplish this task when the voice of interest is louder than any of the competing background noises. Conversely, when two voices are of equal amplitude, infants typically demonstrate little preference for one stream over the other. Researchers have hypothesized that because an infant’s ability to selectively pay attention to one voice or sound, even in a mix of others, has not fully developed yet, the infant is actually interpreting competing voice streams that are equally loud as one single stream with unfamiliar patterns and sounds. During the first few months after birth, infants will subconsciously study the language being used around them, taking note of the rhythmic patterns, the sequences of sounds, and the intonation of the language. Newborns will also start to actively process how things like differences in pitch or accented syllables further affect meaning. Interestingly, up until six months of age, they can still recognize and discriminate between the phonemes (single units of sound in a language like “ba” or “pa”) of other languages. Though infants do display a preference for the language they heard in utero, most infants are not biased towards the specific phonemes of that language. This ability to recognize and discriminate between all phonemes comes to an end by the middle of their first year, at which point infants start displaying a preference for phonemes in their native language, culminating at age one, when they stop responding to foreign phonemes altogether. This is part of what is known as the “critical period,” which begins at birth and lasts until puberty. During this period, as the brain continues to grow and change, language acquisition is instinctual, explaining why young children seem to pick up languages so easily.
IV. Reading Comprehension: Choose the best answer to complete each sentence. Article 1 Infants are born as scientists, constantly interacting with and questioning the world around them. However, as any good scientist knows, simply making observations is not sufficient; a large part of learning is dependent on being able to communicate ideas, observations, and feelings with others. Though most infants do not produce discernible words until around age one or one-and-a-half, they begin gaining proficiency in their native languages long before that. In fact, many linguists agree that a newborn baby’s brain is already pre-programmed for language acquisition, meaning that it’s as natural for a baby to talk as it is for a dog to dig. According to psycholinguist Anne Cutler, an infant’s language acquisition actually begins well before birth. At only one day old, newborns have demonstrated the ability to recognize the voices and rhythms heard during their last trimester in the muffled confines of the womb. In general, infants are more likely to attend to a specific voice stream if they perceive it as more familiar than other streams. Newborns tend to be especially partial to their mother’s voice and her native language, as opposed to another woman or another language. For example, when an infant is presented with a voice stream spoken by his mother and a background stream delivered by an unfamiliar voice, he will effortlessly attend to his mother while ignoring the background stream. Therefore, by using these simple yet important cues, and others like them, infants can easily learn the essential characteristics and rules of their native language. However, it is important to note that an infant’s ability to learn from the nuances of her mother’s speech is predicated upon her ability to separate that speech from the sounds of the dishwasher, the family dog, the bus stopping on the street outside, and, quite possibly, other streams of speech, like a newscaster on the television down the hall or siblings playing in an adjacent room. Infants are better able to accomplish this task when the voice of interest is louder than any of the competing background noises. Conversely, when two voices are of equal amplitude, infants typically demonstrate little preference for one stream over the other. Researchers have hypothesized that because an infant’s ability to selectively pay attention to one voice or sound, even in a mix of others, has not fully developed yet, the infant is actually interpreting competing voice streams that are equally loud as one single stream with unfamiliar patterns and sounds. During the first few months after birth, infants will subconsciously study the language being used around them, taking note of the rhythmic patterns, the sequences of sounds, and the intonation of the language. Newborns will also start to actively process how things like differences in pitch or accented syllables further affect meaning. Interestingly, up until six months of age, they can still recognize and discriminate between the phonemes (single units of sound in a language like “ba” or “pa”) of other languages. Though infants do display a preference for the language they heard in utero, most infants are not biased towards the specific phonemes of that language. This ability to recognize and discriminate between all phonemes comes to an end by the middle of their first year, at which point infants start displaying a preference for phonemes in their native language, culminating at age one, when they stop responding to foreign phonemes altogether. This is part of what is known as the “critical period,” which begins at birth and lasts until puberty. During this period, as the brain continues to grow and change, language acquisition is instinctual, explaining why young children seem to pick up languages so easily.
The main purpose of the article’s third paragraph is to ________.
- A illustrate how distinct speech streams increase the speed of language acquisition
- B discuss the mechanism by which louder volumes of speech impede language acquisition
- C explain the role of the relative volumes of sounds on an infant’s ability to learn to process language
- D provide scientific data that measure the improvement in language acquisition as the volume of the speech stream increases
思路引導 VIP
請試著回想文章第三段提到的情境：當家裡的電視聲、洗碗機聲和媽媽的說話聲「音量大小完全相同」時，嬰兒的感官會如何處理這些聲音？在這種情況下，嬰兒是否還能有效地學習特定語言的模式？這告訴我們什麼因素會直接影響嬰兒的注意力分配？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準捕捉到段落的核心主旨，代表你具備優異的邏輯歸納能力。第三段的重點在於探討嬰兒如何從周遭嘈雜的環境（如洗碗機、狗吠聲）中辨識並分離出特定語音。文章明確指出，音量的相對差異（relative volumes）是關鍵：當感興趣的聲音比背景噪音大時，嬰兒才能有效處理資訊；若音量相等，嬰兒則會將其視為混亂的單一音串。
聲音區辨與音量的關聯性
這題的鑑別度在於區分「現象描述」與「核心因果」。選項 (C) 準確地概括了音量大小（amplitude）如何影響嬰兒處理語言的能力。許多同學可能會被選項 (B) 誤導，認為大聲會「阻礙」學習，但原文其實是說「大聲有助於從噪音中抽離語音」；而選項 (D) 提到的「科學數據」在文中並未具體列出，僅是描述研究假設。你能避開這些敘述細節的陷阱，直接掌握「相對音量」與「語言處理」的邏輯連結，這正是中高階閱讀題最考驗的洞察力。