When children learn a language, they learn the grammar as well as words or vocabulary. No one teaches them; children just “pick them up”.
Before babies begin to produce words, they produce sounds. Some of these sounds will remain if they occur in the language being learned, and others will disappear. This is called the “babbling stage”.
A child does not learn the language “all at once”. The child first speaks only one-word “sentences”. After a few months, the two-word stage arises. During this stage, the child puts two words together. These two-word sentences have definite patterns and express grammatical and meaningful relationships. Still later, in the telegraphic stage, the child will produce longer sentences. These longer sentences are mainly made up of content words. The child’s early grammar lacks many of the rules of the adult grammar, but gradually it will become perfect.
All normal children everywhere learn language. This ability is not dependent on race, social class, geography, or even intelligence (智力). This ability is uniquely (独特的) for human.
小题1:This passage is mainly about ___________.
A．differences between a child’s language and an adult’s
B．ways of teaching babies to talk
C．children’s learning of the mother language
D．the importance of learning foreign languages小题2:The phrase “pick them up” means____________.
A．raise them from the ground
B．learn them without much effort
C．use hands to help carry them
D．study very hard and remember them小题3:During the “babbling stage”, babies ___________.
A．can only produce sound
B．learn to work without falling over
C．can understand people’s talk
D．begin to produce two-word sentences小题4:The two-word sentences produced by babies __________.
A．are simpler than those produced in the “babbling stage”
B．are much more difficult than those produced in the telegraphic stage
C．are strictly grammatical
D．are meaningful and have function小题5:The passage implies that any children can learn a language as long as he is ___________.
A．well-educated
B．clever enough
C．unique
D．physical normal
