GENERAL READING Passace 3 ‘You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 ~ 15, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Speaking in Many Tongues Sanda Fisher, 53, speaks 42 languages. As well as her native English and German, she picked up the Italian and Greek spoken by immigrants in her home town of Armidale in New South ‘Wales, Australia; she also quickly learne the Aboriginal language spoken by the Cootie children at her primary school. When asked how she does it, she really can't explain. ‘I just listen for a few ‘minutes, and then I start to speak, and somehow I just start to see the patterns in my head, T can understand and speak without studying or even chinking very much,” Basia Dombrowski, 19, is another ‘language-learning phenomenon’. Born in a small town in Poland, she is unable to say what her mother congue is: ‘I'm told that my first words came from four different languages, she says, ‘the native dialects of my grandmother who raised me, and of the servant who helped care for me, the Polish my mother spoke and the Yiddish of my father. Ac first I spoke isolated words from each language, but by 18 months, I was speaking in whole sentences in all four languages, but never mixing them.’ As an adult, Basia speaks about 30 languages fluently and is always keen to learn more. ‘I guess you could say it’s my hobby? she says in perfect English. ‘T dont use the languages T learn in my work as a painter, but I do love to speak to people.’How do people learn languages? Is ican innate husnan ability, such as the ability to speak and xeason, or is it something that we learn ‘from seratch’—a system that we learn, fitting the elements of language into it as we learn them, taking into account the envitoament in which we find ourselves? Advocates of the former point of view soce chat all humans are able to learn their native language in che first four or five years of life, whatever the language, and despite the complexity of the Linguistic systems that they need to master This is becauise, according co the most famous proponent of this theory, Noam Chomsley, we are all born with a ‘language acquisition device’ in our brains. What he is seying, effectively, is char language-learning knowledge is ‘builtin’, and that we ate hard-wired, as ie were, to leara a language From bisth, Cognitive linguists like Elizabeth Bates claim chat niost important is our interaction with other humans and the social environment, and it is this that helps us learn a language, Still other researchers, like biolinguists Lenneberg and Piatelli, suggest that we may have a special language-learning gene or gene»-~and thar these genes will determine whether we are poor, average or excellent learners of a forcign language.Whatever the explanation, one thing we can be sure of is thar there are some ontstanding language Jearners who seem to pick up foreign languages with astonishing ease—and these individuals are of special interest to linguists rescarching how we learn languages. One such extraordinary language learner who put his remarkable language-learning skills co use in his work was Ken Hale, late Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Like Fisher and Dombrowski, he discovered his language learning ability early—as a child he picked up the languages of his classmates and other people around him. Unlike Fisher and Dombrowski, however, he went on to study languages—and the people who speak them—frst as a university student and then as a professor, He dedicated his life and research wo the pursuit of a greater understanding of how languages are learnt and co the goal of keeping alive some of the \would’s disappearing languages, many of them languages of oral tradition with no writven form. Much of his research into language learning has taken the form of observing exceptional learners, exploring how they manage to learn nor only their native languages, but up ¢0 50 additional languages. In his own study of this arc, Professor Hale examined the languages he knew, looking for shared characteristics that might lead to the discovery of laws applicable to all languages.Professor Hale's real passion, however, was the investigation and preservation of languages in danger of dying out. He wavelled far and wide to leuen these languages, to find a written form of preserving them, where necessary, and also, at times, co teach them—he taught an Aboriginal language in Australia and a Native American one in the US, He travelled frequently to South America to contribute wo the prescrvation of indigenous languages by Jearning them and helping encourage indigenous people to see che importance of learning them and of passing them on. He is often quoted in relation to his belief in the importance of this preservation of native languages; he once stated that ‘when you lose 2 language, a large part of the culture goes too, because muuch of thar culture is encoded in the language.” Hale's work with indigenous people and languages in danger of extinction was also of value in his investigation of the laws governing language learning and his contribution towards a ‘niversal grammar. Up to now, however, there has been no proof of'such a concept, despite the investigations sot only of linguists, but also of neuroscientists and psychiatrists, Work to isolate the part of the brain thotsteslawich F talisnenccessful—the -esmngeharpahabidn ps left inferior pasietal cortex is dppaxently key to the process, but just how it works is still nor understood. And whether the capacity to learn a language is innare and hereditary remains open to question,Questions I — 5 ‘Match each idea about language learning, | ~ 5, with the correct person, A — E, fiom the box below. Who believes that language fearning involves: 1 recognising language patterns when listening? 2 learning languages as a baby? 3 aninnate ability to learn languages? 4 interacting with others? 5 observing talented tanguage learners? A Ken Hale D Basia Dombrowski B Noam Chomsky £ Sandra Fisher Cc Elizabeth Bates Questions 6 — 10 Complete the summary below. Choose the answers from the box and write them in the spaces provided. extensively disappear _ preserve universal ability Ken Hale discovered his 6 .. ... to learn languages early and made fearning fanguages his profession, dedicating his life to understanding how languages are learnt. The focus of Professor Hale's research was on finding 7 .... . principles applying to all languages. Professor Hale had a passionate interest in the fanguages which are becoming extinct, and he travelled 8 .. .. to learn the languages and to help . them, Hale believed when languages are lost, cultures 11 100.