共用题干 Why is the Native Language Learnt So Well?How does it happen that children learn their mother t...

共用题干
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（精通）of the language. A grown-up person with fully developed mental
powers,in most case,may end up with a faulty and inexact command（掌握）.What accounts for this differ-
ence?
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 fa-
vorable 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,right use of words
and right structure. He drinks in（吸收）all the words and expressions , which come to him in a flash,
ever-bubbling（冒泡的）spring. There is no resistance : there is perfect assimilation.
Then the child has,as it were,pnvate 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 advan-
tage: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.