专八改错真题(2014-2005).doc

专八改错真题2014There is widespread consensus among scholars that second language acquisition (SLA) emerged as a distinct field of research from the late 1950s to early 1960s. There is a high level of agreement that the following questionshave possessed the most attention of researchers in this area:*Is it possible to acquire an additional language in the same sense one acquires a first language? *What is the explanation for the fact adults havemore difficulty in acquiring additional languages than children have? *What motivates people to acquire additional languages? *What is the role ofthelanguage teaching in theacquisition of an additional language? *What sociocultural factors, if any, are relevant in studying the learning of additional languages?From a check of the literature of the field it is clear that alltheapproaches adopted to study the phenomena of SLA so far have one thing in common: The perspective adopted to view the acquiring of an additional language is that of an individual attempts to doso. Whether one labels it “learning” or “acquiring” an additional language, it is an individual accomplishment or what is underfocus is the cognitive, psychological, and institutional status of anindividual. That is, the spotlight is on what mental capabilities are involving, what psychological factors play a role in the learningor acquisition, and whether the target language is learnt in the classroom or acquired through social touch with native speakers.(1) _(2) _(3) _(4) _(5) _(6) _(7) _(8) _(9) _(10) _2013年Psycholinguistics is the name given to the study of the psychological processes involved in language. Psycholinguists study understanding, production, and remembering language, and hence are concerned with listening, reading, speaking, writing, and memory for language.One reason why we take the language for granted is that it usually happens so effortlessly, and, most of time, so accurately. Indeed, when you listen to someone speaking, or looking at this page, you normally cannot help but understand it. It is only in exceptional circumstances we might become aware of the complexity involved: if we are searching for a word but cannot remember it; if a relative or colleague has had a stroke which has influenced their language; if we observe a child acquire language; if we try to learn a second language ourselves as an adult; or if we are visually impaired or hearing impaired or if we meet anyone else who is. As we shall see, all these examples of what might be called “language in exceptional circumstances” reveal a great deal about the processes evolved in speaking, listening, writing, and reading. But given that language processes were normally so automatic, we also need to carry out careful experiments to get at what is happening. 1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2012年The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely.The argument has been going since at least the first century B.C. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, many writers favored certain kind of “free” translation: the spirit, not the letter; the sense not the word; the message rather the form; the matter not the manner. This is the often revolutionary slogan of writers who wanted the truth to be read and understood. Then in the turn of 19th century, when the study of cultural anthropology suggested that the linguistic barriers were insuperable and that the language was entirely the product of culture, the view translation was impossible gained some currency, and with it that, if was attempted at all, it must be as literal as possible. This view culminated the statement of the extreme “literalists”, Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nobokov.The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, the nature of the readership, the type of the text, was not discussed. Too often, writer, translator and reader were implicitly identified with each other. Now, the context has changed, and the basic problem remains.1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2011年From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knewthat when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of aboutseventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did sowith the conscience that I was outraging my true nature and thatsoon or later I should have to settle down and write books.I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five yearson either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. Forthis and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developeddisagreeing mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout myschooldays. I had the lonely childs habit of making up stories andholding conversations with imaginative persons, and I think fromthe very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the feeling ofbeing isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with wordsand a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this createda sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failurein everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious i.e. seriouslyintended writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my firstpoem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2010年So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is, every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say the things their speakers want to say. There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitivepeoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or psychology or the cultivation of rice. Whereas this is not the fault of their language. The Eskimos, it is said, can speak aboutsnow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of those sometimes miscalled “primitive”) is inherently more precise and subtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect in English, a show of unexpected “primitiveness”. The position issimply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in whichEnglish was habitually used made such distinction as important. Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture or cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos life. 1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2009年The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passesfrom one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference between school lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse, learnt in early childhood, is not usually passed on again when thelittle listenerhas grown up, and has children of their own, or even grandchildren.The period between learning a nursery rhyme andtransmittingit may be something from twenty to seventy years. Withthe playgroundlore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passedon within the very hourit is learnt; and in the general, it passes between children of the same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon for the difference in age between playmates to be more than five years. If, therefore, a playground rhyme can be shown to have beencurrently for a hundred years, oreven just for fifty, it follows that ithas been retransmitted over and over; very possibly it has passed along a chain of two or threehundred young hearers and tellers, andthe wonder is that it remains liveafter so much handling, to let alone that it bears resemblance to the original wording.1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2008年The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is avery natural one, and in result language has played a prominent part in national moves. Men have often felt the need to cultivate a given language to show that they are distinctive from another race whose hegemony they resent. At the time the United States split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals thatindependence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a different language from those of Britain. There was even one proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew. Others favoredthe adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things wouldcertainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English and made the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyoneknows, the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory solution of carrying with the same language as before. Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown the worldthat political independence and national identity can be completewithout sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a commonlanguage.1. _ 2. _3. _ 4. _ 5._ 6. _ 7. _8. _9. _10. _2007年From what has been said, it must be clear that no one can make very positive statements about how language originated. There is no material in any language today and in the earliest records of ancient languages show us language in a new and emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remote tribes, no ancient records, providing evidence of a language with a large proportion of such cries than we find in English. It is true that the absence of such evidence does not disprove the theory, but inother grounds too the theory is not very attractive. People of all races and languages make rather similar noises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmen and Malaysians whose languages are utterly different, serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference between these noises and language proper. We maysay that the cries of pain or chortles of amusement are largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, whereas language proper does not consist of signs but of these that have to be learnt and that are wholly conventional.1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2006年We use language primarily as a means of communication withother human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which we live a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as to the way in which words should be arranged toconvey a particular message; the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses actively and that which he recognizes, increases in size as he grows old as a result of education and experience.But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the system remains no more than a psychological reality for the individual, unless he has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another member of his linguistic community; he has to give the system a concrete transmission form. We take it for granted the two most common forms of transmission by means of sounds produced by our vocal organs (speech) or by visual signs (writing). And these are among most striking of human achievements.1. _2. _3. _4. _5. _6. _7. _8. _9. _10. _2005年The University as BusinessA number of colleges and universities have announced steeptuition increases for next year much steeper than the current, very low rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because of a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of business fi