The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children’s vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. Dr. Hart and Dr. Risley published their study in 1995.
They found a close relationship between the number of words a child’s parents had spoken to him by the time he was three and his academic success at the age of nine. At three, children born into professional families had heard 30 million more words than those from a poorly performed family. Besides, recent studies show that words should be spoken directly to a child, rather than simply heard in the home. Leaving children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups talk about Plato.
The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons more or less, and connections between these neurons form at an exponentially(以指数方式) rising rate in the early years of life. It is the pattern of these connections that determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three years old, there will be about 1,000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child’ s experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which decreased. This process—gradual and irreversible, has shaped the path of the child’s life.
Fortunately, there are tools that can help those silent parents. One such is a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) device. It is like a pedometer, but instead of recording users’ walking steps, this device keeps track of words by analyzing the speech children hear. Parents use it to monitor and improve their patterns of words, much as a pedometer-wearing couch potato might try to reach 10,000 steps a day. Plus, parents are taught to make the words they speak to their children more enriching. In this way parents can make sure of an enough input.
【小题1】Which factor influences the children’s intelligence development most according to the text?| A．The wealth of households. | B．Parents' academic success. |
| C．Babies’ inborn language ability. | D．Effective vocabulary input by parents. |
| A．The number of neurons at birth varies a lot. |
| B．Neurons connections can be decided by experiences. |
| C．Individual efforts can also shape the kids' development. |
| D．School education leads to faster increase of the connections. |
| A．To give parents two options. | B．To offer two possible solutions. |
| C．To show the similarity to LENA. | D．To tell the difference from LENA. |
| A．Involve in their games. | B．Share more quality time with them. |
| C．Enlarge their vocabulary through media. | D．Expose them to being spoken to directly. |
