Question

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 43 to 50.

Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of auditory stimuli. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that an infant notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances. By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is playful or angry, attempting to initiate or terminate new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of cues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech. Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating such cues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified syntax, short utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other investigators have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels longer, and emphasize certain words.

More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make precisely those perceptual discriminations that are necessary if they are to acquire aural language.

Babies obviously derive pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to prosaic meaning that it often is for adults

What point does the author make to illustrate that babies are born with the ability to acquire language? 

A. Babies exaggerate their own sounds and expressions

B. Babies begin to understand words in songs

C. Babies notice even minor differences between speech sounds

D. Babies are more sensitive to sounds than are adults

Answer 1

Đáp án C

Giải thích: Thông tin nằm ở đoạn 3 “More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds”. Ta dịch nghĩa: Đáng kể hơn trong sự phát triển ngôn ngữ so với phản ứng với ngữ điệu nói chung là những em bé có thể phân biệt tương đối giữa các âm nói.

Đáp án A sai vì người lớn phóng đại các âm và biểu cảm chứ không phải trẻ

Đáp án B sai vì trẻ chưa hiểu được các từ trong bài hát

Đáp án D sai vì trẻ không nhạy cảm hơn người lớn mà trẻ thích âm thanh, còn người lớn thì coi đó là để hiểu

Dịch nghĩa: Tác giả đưa ra luận điểm gì để chứng minh là trẻ em được sinh ra với khả năng để học ngôn ngữ?

A. Trẻ phóng đại các âm và biểu cảm của chúng

B. Trẻ bắt đầu hiểu các từ trong bài hát

C. Trả nhận ra sự khác biệt nhỏ trong giọng nói

D. Trẻ nhạy cảm với âm thanh hơn người lớn