托福考试

【单选题】Reading 5 "Speech and Writing"
It is a widely held misconception that writing is more perfect than speech. To many people, writing somehow seems more correct and more stable, whereas speech can be careless, corrupted, and susceptible to change. Some people even go so far as to identify language with writing and to regard speech as a secondary form of language used imperfectly to approximate the ideals of the written language.
→ One of the basic assumptions of modern linguistics, however, is that speech is primary and writing is secondary. The most immediate manifestation of language is speech and not writing. Writing is simply the representation of speech in another physical medium. Spoken language encodes thought into a physically transmittable form, while writing, in turn, encodes spoken language into a physically preservable form. Writing is a two-stage process.All units of writing, whether letters or characters, are based on units of speech, i.e., words, sounds, or syllables. When linguists study language, they take the spoken language as their best source of data and their object of description (except in instances of languages like Latin for which there are no longer any speakers).
There are several reasons for maintaining that speech is primary and writing is secondary.
First, writing is a later historical development than spoken language.
Current archeological evidence indicates that writing was first utilized in Sumer, that is, modern-day Iraq, about 6,000 years ago.
As far as physical and cultural anthropologists can tell, spoken language has probably been used by humans for hundreds of thousands of years.

→ Second, writing does not exist everywhere that spoken language exists. This seems hard to imagine in our highly literate society, but the fact is that there are still many communities in the world where a written form of language is not used, and even in those cultures using a writing system, there are individuals who fail to learn the written form of their language. In fact, the majority of theEarth’s inhabitants are illiterate, though quite capable of spoken communication. However, no society uses only a written language with no spoken form.
Third, writing must be taught, whereas spoken language is acquired automatically.All children, except children with serious learning disabilities, naturally learn to speak the language of the community in which they are brought up. They acquire the basics of their native language before they enter school, and even if they never attend school, they become fully competent speakers. Writing systems vary in complexity, but regardless of their level of sophistication, they must all be taught.
Finally, neurolinguistic evidence (studies of the brain in action during language use) demonstrates that the processing and production of written language is overlaid on the spoken language centers in the brain. Spoken language involves several distinct areas of the brain; writing uses these areas and others as well.
→ So what gives rise to the misconception that writing is more perfect than speech There are several reasons. For one thing, the product of writing is usually more aptly worded and better organized, containing fewer errors, hesitations, and incomplete sentences than are found in speech. This perfection of writing can be explained by the fact that writing is the result of deliberation, correction, and revision, while speech is the spontaneous and simultaneous formulation of ideas; writing is therefore less subject to the constraint of time than speech is. In addition, writing is ultimately associated with education and edu
网考网参考答案：A
网考网解析：
"... the majority of the Earth’s inhabitants are illiterate." Choice B is not correct because illiterate populations are quite capable of spoken communication. Choice C is not correct because the majority of the Earth’s inhabitants in the modern world are illiterate. Choice D is not correct because it is not mentioned in the passage. document.getElementById("warp").style.display="none"; document.getElementById("content").style.display="block"; 查看试题解析出处>>