The Bilingual Brain

　　When Karl Kim immigrated to the United States from Korea s a teenager, he had a hard time learning English. Now he speaks it fluently, and he had a unique opportunity to see how our brains adapt to a second language. As a graduate student, Kim worked in the lab of Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist in New York. ____1____ They found evidence that children and adults don't use the same parts of the brain when they learn a second language.

　　The researchers used an instrument called an MRI( magnetic resonance imaging) scanner to study the brains of two groups of bilingual people. ____2____ . The other consisted of people who, like Kim, learned their second language later in life. People from both groups were placed inside the MRI scanner. This allowed Kim and Hirsch to see which parts of the brain were getting more blood and were more active. They asked people from both groups to think about what they had done the day before, first in one language and then the other. They couldn't speak out loud because any movement would disrupt the scanning.

　　Kim and Hirsch looked specifically at two language centers in the brain - Broca's area~ , which is believed to control speech production, and Wernicke's area, which is thought to process meaning. Kim and Hirsch found that both groups of people used the same part of Wernicke's area no matter what language they were speaking. ____3____

　　People who learned a second language as children used the same region in Broca's area for both their first and second languages. People who learned a second language later in life used a different part of Broca's area for their second language. ____4____ Hirsch believes that when language is first being programmed in young children, their brains may mix the sounds and structures of all languages in the same area. Once that programming is complete, the processing of a new language must be taken over by a different part of the brain.

　　A second possibility is simply that we may acquire languages differently as children than we do as adults. Hirsch thinks that mothers teach a baby to speak by using different methods involving touch, sound, and sight. ____5____

　　练习：

　　A But their use of Broca's area was different.

　　B One group consisted of those who had learned a second language as children.

　　C How does Hirsch explain this difference?

　　D We use special parts of the brain for language learning.

　　E And that is very different from learning a language in a high school or college class.

　　F Their work led to an important discovery.

　　答案与题解：

　　1.F　根据本空的后一句：They found evidence that children and adults don’t use the same parts of the brain when they learn a second language.其中they found evidence与discovery相互应。

　　2.B　依据本空的后一句The other consisted of people who，like Kim，learned their second language later in life.one…the other是一固定搭配，用来比较同类事物。

　　3.A　整段讲的是Kim他们对大脑的两个语言中心的分析，得出两组被试都用Wernicke’s area中同一地带，紧接着该谈被试们使用Broca's area的情况。

　　4.C　本段的开头谈到孩子学习第_和第二语言都用Broca’s area相同的地带;而成人学习第二语言时使用Broca’s area不同的地带。后面都是Hirsch对这一现象的解释;He believes….根据上下文C是恰当的。

　　5.E　该句是全文的结束语。本段前两句都讲成年人与小孩习得语言的不同，Hirsch认为，母亲教小孩说话用不同于成人的方法，比如用触摸、声音和情景。Different是一关键词，所以，我们在中学和大学课堂学语言的方法和母亲教孩予的方法是不同的。

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（实习编辑：高奕飞）