第四部分：阅读理解

　　短文后有5道题，每题后面有4个选项。请仔细阅读短文并根据短文回答其后面的问题，从4个选项中选择1个最佳答案涂在答题卡相应的位置上。

　　第一篇：The Bilingual Brain

　　When Karl Kim immigrated to the United States from Korea s a teenager, he had a hard time learning English. Now he speaks it fluently, and he had a unique opportunity to see how our brains adapt to a second language. As a graduate student, Kim worked in the lab of Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist in New York. Their work led to an important discovery. They found evidence that children and adults don't use the same parts of the brain when they learn a second language.

　　The researchers used an instrument called an MRI( magnetic resonance imaging) scanner to study the brains of two groups of bilingual people. One group consisted of those who had learned a second language as children.. The other consisted of people who, like Kim, learned their second language later in life. People from both groups were placed inside the MRI scanner. This allowed Kim and Hirsch to see which parts of the brain were getting more blood and were more active. They asked people from both groups to think about what they had done the day before, first in one language and then the other. They couldn't speak out loud because any movement would disrupt the scanning.

　　Kim and Hirsch looked specifically at two language centers in the brain - Broca's area~ , which is believed to control speech production, and Wernicke's area, which is thought to process

　　meaning. Kim and Hirsch found that both groups of people used the same part of Wernicke's area no matter what language they were speaking. But their use of Broca's area was different.

　　People who learned a second language as children used the same region in Broca's area for both their first and second languages. People who learned a second language later in life used a different part of Broca's area for their second language. How does Hirsch explain this difference? Hirsch believes that when language is first being programmed in young children, their brains may mix the sounds and structures of all languages in the same area. Once that programming is complete, the processing of a new language must be taken over by a different part of the brain. .

　　A second possibility is simply that we may acquire languages differently as children than we do as adults. Hirsch thinks that mothers teach a baby to speak by using different methods involving touch, sound, and sight. And that is very different from learning a language in a high school or college class.

　　31. Kad Kim’s study showed that

　　A. people learn English and Korean in different ways .

　　B. children and adults use the different parts of the brain to learn a second language.

　　C. it is not possible for an adult to speak a second language fluently.

　　D. people’s brain will not change when they learn a second language

　　答案：B

　　32. How did kim and Hirsch study the brains of two groups of bilingual people?

　　A. They interviewed them in English and Korean.

　　B. They asked them to speak the same language.

　　C. They used an MRI scanner to observe their brain.

　　D. They asked them to talk about what they had done the day before.

　　答案：C

　　33.Which aspect of the two language centers in the brain does Paragraph 3 discuss?

　　A. Impact

　　B. Function

　　C. Location

　　D. Size

　　答案：B

　　34. Kim and Hirsch find that children

　　A. use the same region in Broca’s area to learn their first and second language.

　　B. learn a second language slower than adults.

　　C. are better at acquiring the sound system of a second language than adults.

　　D. use special parts of the brain to program the structures of their first language.

　　答案：A

　　35. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that

　　A. students do better in high school than in college.

　　B. bilingual children will learn better in college classes.

　　C. mothers are good language teachers

　　D. it takes more time for adults to learn a second language.

　　答案：D