1、大学英语六级-164 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)How Babbling to Babies Can Boost Their BrainsA. The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children“s vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. That might seem obvious, but it took until 1995 for science to show just how early
2、in life the difference begins to matter. In that year Betty Hart and Todd Risley of the University of Kansas published the results of a decade-long study in which they had looked at how, and how much, 42 families in Kansas City conversed at home. Dr Hart and Dr Risley found a close correlation betwe
3、en the number of words a child“s parents had spoken to him by the time he was three and his academic success at the age of nine. At three, children born into professional families had heard 30 millions more words than those from a poorer background. B. This observation has profound implications for
4、policies about babies and their parents. It suggests that sending children to “pre-school“ (nurseries or kindergartens) at the age of foura favoured step among policymakerscomes too late to compensate for educational shortcomings at home. Happily, understanding of how children“s vocabularies develop
5、 is growing, as several presentations at this year“s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed. C. One of the most striking revelations came from Anne Fernald of Stanford University, who has found that the disparity (差异) appears well before a child is three. Even at t
6、he tender age of 18 months, when most toddlers (刚学走路的小孩) speak only a dozen words, those from disadvantaged families are several months behind other, more favoured children. Indeed, Dr Fernald thinks the differentiation starts at birth. D. She measures how quickly toddlers process language by sittin
7、g them on their mothers“ laps and showing them two images: a dog and a ball, say. A recorded voice tells the toddler to look at the ball while a camera records his reaction. This lets Dr Fernald note the moment the child“s gaze begins shifting towards the correct image. At 18 months, toddlers from b
8、etter-off backgrounds can identify the correct object in 750 milliseconds200 milliseconds faster than those from poorer families. This, says Dr Fernald, is a huge difference. E. The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month gap in the language-processing skil
9、ls and vocabulary of the two groups. It is easy to see how this might happen. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not. F. It is also now clear from Dr Fernald“s work that words
10、spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Putting children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato. G. The effects can be
11、 seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University told the meeting how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with exist
12、ing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the
13、 time a child is three there will be about 1000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child“s experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory (发展轨迹) of the child“s life. H. Fortunately, tacit
14、urnity (沉默寡言) can be easily fixed. Telling parents is the first step: Many who volunteered themselves and their children for study did not know they could help their babies do well simply by speaking to them. I. There are tools that can help, as well. One such is a Language Environment Analysis (LEN
15、A) device. It is like a pedometer (计步器), but keeps track of words, not steps, by analysing the speech children hear. It was originally developed as a tool for research, but parents kept asking for the data it recorded and researchers thus realised it could also serve as a spur. Parents use it to mon
16、itor, and improve, their patterns of speech, much as a pedometer-wearing couch potato might try to reach 10000 steps a day, say. J. A recent study by Dana Suskind shows how promising this approach is. Dr Suskind is a paediatric surgeon in Chicago. She got interested in the field while monitoring chi
17、ldren whom she had fitted with artificial cochleas (耳蜗), to treat deafness. K. Her new study shows that the use of a LENA device, combined with a one-off home visit to give parents advice, produces a 32% increase in the number of words a child hears per hour after six weeks. Dr Suskind“s Thirty Mill
18、ion Words Initiative (named after Dr Hart“s and Dr Risley“s original finding) is now using LENA devices and weekly home visits to improve the linguistic diet of children in Chicago. Parents are taught to make the words they serve up more enriching. For example, instead of telling a child, “Put your
19、shoes on,“ one might say instead, “It is time to go out. What do we have to do?“ L. Other groups are trying similar approaches. In Providence, Rhode Island, Angel Taveras, the mayor, has started a project that uses LENA devices to improve the vocabularies of children in pre-school. Meanwhile, in Chi
20、cago and several other places, nurses who visit mothers“ homes to give them advice on health and nutrition also encourage them to chat to their children and read to them aloud. Such interventions are effective and not particularly expensive. M. In January Barack Obama urged Congress and state govern
21、ments to make high-quality preschools available to every four-year-old. He is knocking on an open door. This financial year 30 states and the District of Columbia have increased spending on pre-schools. Nationally, this amounts to an increase of 6.9%. N. That is a good thing. Pre-school programmes a
22、re known to develop children“s numeracy, social skills and (as the term “pre-school“ suggests) readiness for school. But they do not deal with the gap in much earlier development that Dr Fernald, Dr Noble, Dr Suskind and others have identified. And it is this gap, more than a year“s pre-schooling at
23、 the age of four, which seems to determine a child“s chances for the rest of his life.（分数：25.00）(1).A researcher thinks that the language gap can start as early as birth.（分数：2.50）(2).A device designed for research can also be used to supervise and improve the home language environment for children.（
24、分数：2.50）(3).Children from professional families hear millions more words at the age of three than kids from disadvantaged families.（分数：2.50）(4).Early experiences determine the condition of the connections formed by children“s brains.（分数：2.50）(5).From policymakers“ perspective, the favourable age to
25、enter the kindergarten is four.（分数：2.50）(6).Parents are encouraged to make their words varied and expressive when communicating with their kids.（分数：2.50）(7).Putting a child in front of the TV is no substitute for direct communication with the child.（分数：2.50）(8).Research shows that children from a po
26、orer background lag behind by up to six months at age two in the language-processing skills.（分数：2.50）(9).The early language gap may have a bigger effect on a child“s entire life than a year“s pre-school education at age four.（分数：2.50）(10).Many parents didn“t know they could help with their babies“ l
27、anguage development simply by talking to them.（分数：2.50）Why We Love to RunA. “Daddy, where are you going?“ my son asked me recently as I was lacing up my running shoes on a cold, wet Sunday morning. “Running,“ I said. “Why?“ he asked. He“s only three. But it was a good question, and one I couldn“t re
28、adily answer. I didn“t really want to go. My body was still jarring from the shock of being hauled out of its cozy bed. I was training for a marathon, sure, but it was still months away. Right at that moment, it didn“t feel critically important to be heading out into the unruly winter morning. I cou
29、ld go later. Or the next day. Or just not run the marathon. Why was I even running a marathon? But something was making me go. “Because it“s fun,“ I said, rather unconvincingly. Running is just running. B. Of course, some people run to lose weight, or to get fit, and these are great reasons. Running
30、 is also easy to do, it“s cheap, and you can do it when you want without having to book a court or rustle up a team. All these factors certainly contribute to the fact that running is one of the most popular sports in the UK, with more than two million people in England running at least once a week,
31、 according to Sport England. C. But for many of those two million runners, the real reason we head out to pound the roads until our legs hurt is more intangible than weight loss or fitness. I remember, as a keen runner in my youth, constantly correcting people who asked me if I was running to get fi
32、t. “No,“ I would say. “I“m getting fit to run.“ I may have thought I was being clever, but for me and many others, running has its own inherent raison d“tre (存在的理由). What that is, however, is harder to put your finger on. D. Many runners become obsessed with times. The need to break the 40-minute ba
33、rrier for the 10K, for example, or run under four hours for the marathon, can become the all-conquering reason. There is something reassuring about striving towards such fixed goals, measuring your progress in numbers that are not open to interpretation, but stand there as unambiguous achievements i
34、n an otherwise confusing world. Yet, really, these numbers are so arbitrary as to be almost meaningless. And as soon as they are achieved, another target is thrown out almost instantly. E. A runner I know last year trained with intense dedication with the goal of running a marathon in less than thre
35、e hours. In the end he ran three hours and two minutes. Afterwards I spoke to him expecting him to be distraught (心烦意乱的) at coming so close. On the contrary, he was pleased. “I“m actually glad,“ he said. “If I“d done it, that would be it. Now I“ve still got my target, I can try again next year.“ Run
36、ning is joyful. F. “Why do we do this to ourselves?“ It“s a common refrain at running clubs up and down the country. Usually I hear it as I“m about to head out to run with a group of men and women in fluorescent (发亮的) tops, a sense of foreboding (预感) mingling among us in anticipation of the pain we“
37、re about to put ourselves through. But nobody ever gives a sensible answer. It“s a rhetorical question. Deep down, we all know the answer. G. Running brings us joy. Watch small children when they are excited, at play, and mostly they can“t stop running. Back and forth, up and down, in little, pointl
38、ess circles. I remember, even as an older child, I“d often break into a run when walking along the street, for no reason. There“s a great moment in The Catcher in the Rye when Holden Caulfield, caught in the uneasy space between childhood and adulthood, is walking across his school grounds one eveni
39、ng and he suddenly starts to run. “I don“t even know what I was running forI guess I just felt like it,“ he says. H. This will to run is innate. In fact, humans may well have evolved the way we did because of our ability to run. Christopher McDougall“s bestselling book Born to Run is largely based a
40、round a theory devised by Harvard scientists that humans evolved through persistence huntingchasing animals down until they dropped dead. It“s why we have Achillies tendons, arched feet, big bums, and a nuchal ligament at the back of our necks (to keep our heads still as we run). While even Usain Bo
41、lt would be left trailing in a sprint against most four-legged mammals, over long distances we are the Olympic champions of the animal kingdom. If they could keep them in sight for long enough, our ancestors could catch even the swiftest runners such as antelope just by running after them. I. Indeed
42、, the great Kenyan runner Mike Boit told me the story of how his village held a celebration for him after he won the 1978 Commonwealth Games. He was showing off his medal when his old childhood friend came up to him and said: “That“s all very good, but can you still catch an antelope?“ J. But while
43、as children, and even adolescents, we can respond to this natural urge to run and break into a trot (小跑) whenever the feeling takes us, as adults it“s not the done thing to just start running at any moment, without any reason. So we formalise it. We become runners. We buy running kit. We set out our
44、 carrots (our targets), we download iPhone apps, we get people to sponsor us (so there“s no backing out), and once everything is set up, finally we can run. Running can bring enlightenment. K. Racing along out on the trails, or even through the busy streets of a city, splashing through puddles, lett
45、ing the rain drench us, the wind ruffle us, we begin to sense a faint recollection of that childish joy. Somewhere a primal essence stirs deep within us; this being born not to sit at a desk or read newspapers and drink coffee, but to live a wilder existence. As we run, the layers of responsibility
46、and identity we have gathered in our lives, the father, mother, lawyer, teacher, Manchester United-supporter labels, all fall away, leaving us with the raw human being underneath. It“s a rare thing, and it can be confronting. Some of us will stop, almost shocked by ourselves, by how our heart is pum
47、ping, by how our mind is racing, struggling with our attempts to leave it behind. L. But if we push on, running harder, deeper into the loneliness, further away from the world and the structure of our lives, we begin to feel strangely elated, detached yet at the same time connected, connected to our
48、selves. With nothing but our own two legs moving us, we begin to get a vague, tingling sense of who, or what, we really are. In Japan, the monks of mount Hiei run up to 1000 marathons in 1000 days in an attempt to reach enlightenment. I once stood by the roadside at around mile 24 of the London mara
49、thon, watching as person after person ran by, almost every one of them at a point in their lives they would rarely visit again. It was almost like seeing into their souls, their faces grimacing and contorted, but also alive with the effort. Each one of them soon after crossing the line would be glowing with a sense of well-being. Some may even be moved to tears by it (I was after my first marathon). It“s the fabled runner“s high, of course, but by labelling it such we diminish it. It may only be chemicals shooting around in your brain, but after a long run everything seems right in the w
