Is language, like food, a basic human need? Judging from the extreme experiment of Frederick in the 13th century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue he told the nurses to keep silent.
All the babies died before the first year. But clearly there was more than language deprivation (剥夺，丧失). What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the ability to survive is seriously affected.
Today no such extreme deprivation exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to signals of the baby, whose brain is programmed, to mop up language rapidly. There are critical times, it seems when children learn more rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again.
Linguists suggest that speech milestones are reached in a fixed order 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.
Recent evidence suggests that a baby is born with the ability 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”.
But speech has to be developed, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the child’s babbling, clinging, grasping, crying, smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals reduces the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child’s nonverbal (非语言的) signals is basic to the growth and development of language.
小题1:Frederick’s experiment was extreme because _________.
A．he wanted to prove children are born with ability to speak
B．he wanted his nurses to say another language
C．he was unkind to the nurses
D．he ignored the importance of mothering to the babies小题2:The reason that some children are backward in speaking is most likely that _________.
A．they do not listen carefully to their mothers
B．their mothers do not respond to their attempts to speak
C．their brain has to absorb too much language at once
D．their mothers are not intelligent enough to help them小题3:In paragraph 3, by “critical times” the author means _________.
A．difficult periods in the child’s life
B．moments when the child becomes critical towards its mother
C．important stages in the child’s development
D．times when mothers often neglect their children小题4:If a child starts to speak later than others, he will _________ in future.
A．have a high IQ
B．be less intelligent
C．not necessarily be backward
D．be insensitive to verbal signals小题5:If the mother seldom responds to her child’s signals, _________.
A．the child will be able to speak properly
B．the child will continue to give out signals
C．the child will invent a language of own
D．the child will make little effort to speak
