Why is the Native Language Learnt So Well? How does it happen that children learn their mother tongue so well? When we compa

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问题                  Why is the Native Language Learnt So Well?
    How does it happen that children learn their mother tongue so well? When we compare them with adults learning a foreign language, we often find this interesting fact. A little child without knowledge or experience often succeeds in a complete mastery of the language. A grown-up person with fully developed mental powers, in most case, may end up with a faulty and inexact command. What accounts for this difference?
    Despite other explanations, the real answer in my opinion lies partly in the child himself, partly in the behavior of the people around him. In the first place, the time of learning the mother tongue is the most favorable of all, namely, the first years of life. A child hears it spoken from morning till night and, what is more important, always in its genuine form, with the right pronunciation, right intonation, and right use of words and right structure. He drinks in all the words and expressions, which come to him in a flash, ever-bubbling spring. There is no resistance: there is perfect assimilation.
    Then the child has, as it were, private lessons all the year round, while an adult language-student has each week a limited number of hours, which he generally shares with others. The child has another advantage; he hears the language in all possible situations, always accompanied by the right kind of gestures and facial expressions. Here there is nothing unnatural, such as is often found in language lessons in schools, when one talks about ice and snow in June or scorching heat in January. And what a child hears is generally what immediately interests him. Again and again, when his attempts at speech are successful, his desires are understood and fulfilled.
    Finally, though a child’s "teachers" may not have been trained in language teaching, their relations with him are always close and personal. They take great pains to make their lessons easy.
Adults’ knowledge and mental powers hinder their complete mastery of a foreign language.

选项 A、Right
B、Wrong
C、Not mentioned

答案C

解析 题干大意:成年人的知识和智力阻碍了他们对外语的掌握。该问题也是明显考查对事实的判断。利用答案线索词mental powers,我们很快在第一段第三句中发现mental powers,发现该句提到:智力充分发展的成年人,在大多数的情况下,对外语的掌握是错误的和不准确的。而该句的下一句引出的是成年人和儿童在学习语言方面不同的理由(第二段的段首句),但原文中并没提到“成年人掌握外语的能力较差的原因”,所以判断该问题句没提到。
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