Page 41 - IELTS Preparation band 5.0-6.5

it shouldn't depend on such patterns, but only on the
0 Work in pairs. Look at the underlining in
, ompletion of previous stages.
Question 1 below, then read the first paragraph
In 2007, researchers at Harvard University, who were of the passage. What is the answer?
studying the two theories, found a clever way to test
them. More than 20,000 internationally adopted children
Questions 1-4
enter the US each year. Many of them no longer hear
their birth language after they arrive, and they must learn Do the following statements agree with the
English more or less the same way infants do - that is, claims of the writer in the reading passage?
by listening and by trial and error. International adoptees Write
don't take classes or use a dictionary when they are
YES if the statement agrees with the
learning their new tongue and most of them don't have a
claims of the writer
well-developed first language. All of these factors make
them an ideal population in. which to test these competing NO if the statement contradicts the
claims of the writer
hypotheses about how language is learned.
Neuroscientists Jesse Snedeker, Joy Geren and NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what
Carissa Shafto studied the language development of the writer thinks about this
27 children adopted from China between the ages of
This is a paraphrase of few things are as
two and five years. These children began learning English
funny in the first paragraph of the passage.
at an older age than US natives and had more mature
brains with which to tackle the task. Even so, just as I
with American-born infants, their first English sentences
I People are extremely amused when they
consisted of single words and were largely bereft of
see a baby talk like an adult. - ----,
function words, word endings and verbs. The adoptees
2 Behaviourists of the early 20th century
then went through the same stages as typical American-
argued that children learn to speak by
born children, albeit at a faster clip. The adoptees and
copying adults.
native children started combining words in sentences
3 Children have more conversations with
when their vocabulary reached the same sizes, further
adults than with other children.
suggesting that what matters is not how
4 Scientists have found it easy to work out
old you are or how mature your brain is, but the number
why babies use one-word sentences.
of words you know.
This finding - that having more mature brains did not help
These words are similar to words in the
the adoptees avoid the toddler-talk stage - suggests that
passage, so they help find the right place.
babies speak in babytalk not because they have baby
brains, but because they have only just started learning
and need time to gain enough vocabulary to be able to
0 Now underline the words in Questions 2- 4 that
expand their conversations. Before long, the one-word
help you find the right place in the passage. Then
stage will give way to the two-word stage and so on.
answer Questions 2- 4.
Learning how to chat like an adult is a gradual process.
But this potential answer also raises an even older and Exam advice Yes I No 1 Not Given
more difficult question. Adult immigrants who learn a
second language rarely achieve the same proficiency in • You should use the same approach for True I
a foreign language as the average child raised as a native False I Not Given and Yes I No I Not Given
speaker. Researchers have long suspected there is a questions (see page 11).
'critical period' for language development, after which • Write your answer clearly. If the examiner
it cannot proceed with full success to fluency. Yet we is not sure what you have written, it will
~till do not understand this critical period or know why be marked wrong.
1t ends.

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adapted from Scientific American: Mind Matters

Getting the message across @