CONTENTS

Unit 1

TEXT Why Is the Native Language Learnt

So Well

WORD STUDY arrange; demand; learn

EXERCISES

Unit 2

TEXT Four Men and a Box

WORD STUDY drive; fail; reward

EXERCISES

Unit 3

TEXT Pollution Is a Dirty Word

WORD STUDY catch; lack; employ

EXERCISES

Unit 4

TEXT Paul Bunyan and the Popcorn BIizzard

WORD STUDY invent; reflect; mention

EXERCISES

Unit 5

TEXT New York to France in a Rowboat

WORD STUDY cease; suffer; satisfy

EXERCISES

Unit 6

TEXT An Attack on the Family

WORD STUDY discover; let; retire

EXERCISES

Unit 7

TEXT A New Kind of Whale (Part 1)

WORD STUDY imagine; discuss; deserve

EXERCTSES

Unit 8

TEXT A New Kind of Whale (Part 2)

WORD STUDY appear; notice; save

EXERCISES

Unit 9

TEXT The Death of a City

WORD STUDY remember; impress; arrive

EXERCISES

Unit 10

TEXT Louis Armstrong - A Jazz Immortal

WORD STUDY absorb; contribute; separate

EXERCISES

Unit 11

TEXT From Log-cabin to White House

WORD STUDY elect; trust; achieve

EXERCISES

Unit 12

TEXT David and the Waiter (A play made out

of a scene from David Copperfield)

WORD STUDY burst; order; beat.

EXERCISES

Unit 13

TEXT Love

WORD STUDY strike; wonder; conquer

EXERCISES

Unit 14

TEXT The Lady with the Lamp

WORD STUDY charge; consult; supply

EXERCISES

Unit 15

TEXT A Partnership of Miracles: The Story of

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy

WORD STUDY develop; master; devote

EXERCISES

Unit 16

TEXT Three Grcat Puffy Rolls

WORD STUDY hire; persuade; proceed

EXERCISES

TEXT

Why Is the Native Langnage

Learnt So Well ?

by Otte Jfspersen

How does it happcn that children leam their mother tongue

so well ? Lct us compare them with adults learning a foreign

language, for thc comparison is both interesting and instructivc.

Here we have a little child, without knowledge or experience;

there a grown-up person with fuMy developed mental powers.

Here a method of teaching without planning; there the whole

task laid out in a system. Here no professional teachers, but

parents, brothers and sisters, playmates; there teachers specialiy

trained to teach languages. Here only oral instruction; there

not only that, but text-books, dictionaries and visual aids. And

yet this is the result: here a complcte mastery ofthe language,

however stupid the children; there, in most cases, even with

people otherwise highly gifted, a faulty and inexact command.

Why is there such a difference ?

Some people believe that a child's organs ofspeech are more

flexible than an adult's. This explanation, however, does not

really hold water. Children do not learn sounds correctlys

at once, but make very many mistakes. Their flexibility of

the tongue and lips is acquired later, and with no small dif-

ficulty.

Others maintain that a child's ear is especially sensitive.

But then the ear also needs traming, since at first it can hardly

notice differences in sounds which grown-up people hear most

clearly.

The real answer in my opinion lies partly in the child

himself, partly in the behaviour of the people around him.

In the first place, the time of learning the mother tongue is the

most favourable of all, that is, the first years of life. A child

hears it spoken from morning till night and what is more

important, always in its genuine form, with the right pronun-

ciation, right intonation, right use of words and right structure.

He drinks in all the words and expressions which come to him

in a fresh, everbubbling spring. There is no resistance; there

is perfect assimilation.

Then the child has, as it were, private lessons all the year

round, while an adult language-student has each week a

limited number of hours which he usually shares with others.

Besides, the child hears the language in all possible situations,

always with the right kind of gesturcs and facial expressions.

Here there is nothing unnatural, such as is oftenfound in lan-

guage lessons in schools when one talks about ice and snow in

June or intense heat in January. And what a child hears is

usually what immediately interests him. Again and again,

when he succeeds in his attempts at speech, his desires are un-

derstood and fulfilled.