Question

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

It is hard to know what babies want. They can’t talk, walk, or even point at what they’re thinking about. 1. And, compared to adults, they develop these skills quickly. People have a hard time learning new languages as they grow older, but infants have the ability to learn any language easily.

For a long time, scientists have tried to explain how such young children can learn complicated(复杂的) grammatical rules and sounds of a language. 2. This new information might eventually help kids with learning problems as well as adults who want to learn new languages. It might even help scientists who are trying to design computers that can communicate like people do.

Most babies go “goo goo” and “ma ma” by 6 months of age. 3. For decades, scientists have wondered how the brains of young children figure out how to communicate using language. With the help from new technologies and research strategies, scientists are now finding that babies begin life with the ability to learn any language.

They get into contact with other people, listen to what they say and watch their movements very closely. 4. Studies show that, up to about 6 months of age, babies can recognize all the sounds that make up all the languages in the world.

There are about 6,000 sounds that are spoken in languages around the globe, but not every language uses every sound. For example, while the Swedish language has 16 vowel sounds, English uses 8 vowel sounds, and Japanese uses just 5. Adults can hear only the sounds used in the languages they speak fluently. To a native Japanese speaker, for example, the letters R and L sound the same. 5.

A. Children don’t respond to this kind of sound.

B. Most children speak in full sentences by age 3.

C. A baby’s brain focuses on the most common sounds.

D. That is why they quickly master the languages they hear often.

E. So a Japanese speaker cannot tell “row” from “low”, or “rake” from “lake”.

F. Yet newborns begin to develop language skills long before they begin speaking.

G. Now, researchers are knowing about what’s happening in the brains of the youngest language learners.

Answer 1