According to US research, it can take up to ten years to bee a near-native English speaker. Asian and Spanish students took between five and ten years to reach native speaker performance in English-only schools. Fluency obviously doesn’t happen overnight. But time can definitely make you a better speaker.
After testing his own memory, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that humans forget most of what they learn in the first 20 minutes.
So cramming right before a speaking exam is not likely to be as effective as practicing regularly over time. The more you practice, the more familiar new words will bee. In the classroom, studies have also shown that repeating oral tasks improves a speaker’s performance.
One of the best repetition exercises is the 4/3/2 technique. Speakers give the same talk to three different listeners with a progressive decrease in delivery time, starting at four minutes, then three, and finally two minutes. This exercise has been proven to help learners speak faster. It can also result in less hesitation and more grammatical accuracy. While time dose make a difference when it es to speaking perfect English, it would not hurt to brush up on your other language skills.
Studies have also shown that reading can increase your speaking vocabulary. After one month of an extensive reading program, a 27-year-old student of French became more familiar with 65 percent of the new words.
Aside from choosing the right learning methods, having certain personality traits may also help. US linguistics expert Stephen Krashen believes those with high motivation, self-confidence and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for speaking success.
Krashen says students who don’t have these qualities are more likely to have a “mental block”. “Even if they understand the message, the input will not reach the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition,” he writes in his book Principles and Practice in second Language Acquisition.
【小题1】According to the passage, if you want to be a near-native speaker, you need .A．long-term speaking practice and much readingB．speaking practice for ten years onlyC．long-term speaking practice, much reading and certain qualitiesD．cramming new words every day【小题2】The author put forward the 4/3/2 technique just to show that .A．you should speak to 3 different peopleB．you should speak to 3 different people at 3 different timesC．it can prevent you from making grammar mistakesD．it is really a good way to make you a better speaker【小题3】The example of a 27-year-old student of French in the passage mainly means that .A．reading can enlarge your vocabulary for your speakingB．reading can make you memorize just 65 percent of the new wordsC．the 27-year-old student of French is very cleverD．in one month, you can improve your speaking ability【小题4】The underlined phrase “linguistics expert” means a person who is quite expert at .A．languagesB．spoken languageC．scientific researchD．teaching EnglishC
网友回答
(答案→)C
解析：本文告诉我们学好英语的几种方法。
【小题1】C 考查细节题。根据According to US research, it can take up to ten years to bee a near-native English speaker. Asian and Spanish students took between five and ten years to reach native speaker performance in English-only schools.
【小题2】D 细节题解题。根据This exercise has been proven to help learners speak faster. It can also result in less hesitation and more grammatical accuracy.可知答案为：D。
【小题3】A 考查细节题。根据Studies have also shown that reading can increase your speaking vocabulary.然后举了那个例子，说明举例就是为了说明这个道理。故答案为A。
【小题4】A 猜测词意题。本文讲述的是跟学习语言有关的，故应该是语言学家。