雅思阅读 98: Switching Languages Within One Sentence（一句话里切换语言）

改编自 Frontiers in Psychology / Cambridge Bilingualism（2023–2026年）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1150159/full

Reading Passage

A. Listen to two friends who share more than one language and you may catch them leaping between them mid-sentence — a phrase in English, a reply in Czech, a technical term inserted from Spanish — as though the two languages were two shelves in a single cupboard rather than two separate rooms. Older attitudes treated this habit, known as code-switching, as a confession of inadequacy: muddled, lazy, a failure to master either tongue properly. The assumption was that a speaker who truly knew a language would never reach for another, and that mixing them was a sloppy compromise rather than a considered choice. The evidence, however, points firmly and unmistakably in the other direction altogether. Teachers once corrected children for doing it, and parents worried that bouncing between two languages would overburden a young mind, draining its limited capacity. Psycholinguists now regard this suspicion as a piece of folk wisdom that the evidence has steadily eroded. Far from a sign of confusion, switching languages is a subtle, rule-governed skill that demands constant negotiation of meaning, audience and tone. The person who does it fluently is not confused between two tongues but choosing, within a single breath, the word that fits best. What looks, to an outsider, like a failure of concentration is in fact its opposite: a mind dividing its attention efficiently between two complete systems at once.

B. The first thing to grasp is that code-switching is not random. A bilingual speaker does not drop into another tongue at arbitrary moments; the switches obey grammatical constraints that listeners intuit without ever being taught. A speaker might reach for an English word inside a Czech sentence because that word arrives more quickly on the tongue, is easier to pronounce, or simply captures a nuance that the local word misses. Far from being overwhelmed, the bilingual brain is running two language systems in parallel and selecting between them in real time — keeping one active while the other remains at the ready, like two engines idling. Neither is ever fully switched off; both stay warm, and the speaker simply reaches for whichever is needed next. Psycholinguists describe the practice, approvingly, as using cognitive resources to their fullest rather than squandering them. The listener, far from being confused, simply follows the sense of what is said, no matter which language it arrives in. A person who switches deftly is not confusing languages; they are choosing, within a single breath, the word that best fits the listener and the moment. A term borrowed from another tongue can be shorter, more precise, or simply carry a nuance no local word quite manages.

C. This view drew much of its early energy from a bold and appealing claim: that managing two languages makes the bilingual child smarter. The so-called "bilingual advantage" held that constantly suppressing one language to speak the other trains the very system that governs attention and self-control — the executive function that lets a person ignore distractions, switch tasks and hold information in mind. Laboratory studies seemed to support it: bilingual children outperformed monolingual peers on tasks that required ignoring misleading cues, and the gap was attributed to years of practice in choosing the right language for the moment. The idea spread so widely that it hardened, in popular science, into the comforting belief that learning a second language is a kind of cognitive workout for the brain, and that every new tongue quietly strengthens the mind. It was a message with broad appeal to parents, educators and, not least, the language-teaching industry, all of whom had a reason to want the bilingual brain to be a superior one. The trouble, as so often, was that the wish outran the evidence.

D. Over the last decade, however, that comfortable story has grown complicated. When researchers ran large studies across many tests of executive function, the predicted advantage for bilinguals failed to materialise as consistently as the early work had promised; in one broad analysis, none of nine different measures showed the expected benefit. Other experiments found bilinguals sharper at switching between tasks but, surprisingly, no better — and on some measures worse — at holding information in working memory than monolinguals. The picture that emerges is finely grained. The benefits appear to depend on how the switching happens: people who choose when to switch of their own accord, and who use both languages in balanced measure, show the clearest gains in inhibitory control, whereas frequent, involuntary switching seems to blunt the very skill it was meant to train. How the switching is done, in other words, matters as much as how often it happens — and the mind that switches by choice is not the same as the mind that switches by habit.

E. What survives from the debate is a more modest claim. Bilingualism is not a superpower that guarantees a sharper mind, but neither is it the handicap the old myths made it. Children who switch languages are often simply filling a gap: if the exact word for an object exists in only one of their tongues, they borrow it rather than stay silent. Adults do much the same, choosing the language that fits the listener, the setting or the exact shade of meaning. The habit that educators once forbade turns out to be evidence of a mind flexibly allocating its two languages to their best uses. The lesson for the classroom, and for the anxious parent, is that a child who speaks in two languages within one sentence is not confused — they are negotiating a shared world with remarkable deftness. A child who flips between tongues is practising exactly the mental agility that the early research hoped to find — only not quite as universally, or as powerfully, as once claimed.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. An orderly skill, not random jumping ii. The old prejudice against mixed-up speech iii. The famous claim that bilingualism sharpens the mind iv. The large studies that complicated the story v. A balanced verdict on the bilingual brain vi. How babies learn their first words vii. Why monolinguals always win at memory tests

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. How were bilingual speakers once judged for switching languages mid-sentence? A. As a mark of special talent. B. As a sign that they had not mastered either language well. C. As evidence of hearing loss. D. As a fashionable form of poetry.

6. What does the passage say about the timing of switches? A. They happen at completely random moments. B. They follow grammatical patterns that listeners intuit. C. They are always planned in advance. D. They occur only when speaking to children.

7. What did the early "bilingual advantage" claim propose? A. That suppressing one language trains attention and self-control. B. That bilingual children always learn to read later. C. That two languages overload young brains. D. That monolinguals are more creative.

8. According to the later, large studies, when do cognitive gains appear clearest? A. When switching is completely involuntary. B. When people choose when to switch and use both languages in balance. C. When only one language is ever used. D. When switching happens at fixed, imposed times.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Teachers in the past sometimes corrected children for switching between languages.
10. Bilinguals consistently outperformed monolinguals on every test in the broadest studies.
11. Frequent involuntary switching may weaken the inhibitory control it was thought to build.
12. Children often switch languages simply because a needed word exists in only one of them.
13. Bilingual people generally earn higher salaries than monolinguals.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Far from being overwhelmed, the bilingual brain keeps one language active while the other remains at the (14) __________, selecting between them in real time; children who switch are often merely filling a lexical (15) __________.

答案与解析

← 上一篇 | 返回雅思焦点 | 下一篇 →