2. 职称英语
  3. In a wealthy neighbourhood in Seoul, anxious parents drag frightened toddler

In a wealthy neighbourhood in Seoul, anxious parents drag frightened toddler

游客2023-09-14  61
问题     In a wealthy neighbourhood in Seoul, anxious parents drag frightened toddlers into Dr Nam Woo’s office and demand that he operate on the children’s tongues. It is a simple procedure: Just a snip (剪开) on a membrane and the tongue is supposedly longer, more flexible and—some South Koreans believe—better able to pronounce such notorious tongue-teasers for Asians as the English word "rice" so it doesn’t sound like "lice".
    "Parents are eager to have their children speak English, and so they want to have them get the operation," said Nam, who performs about 10 procedures a month, almost all on children younger than 5.
    In this competitive and education-obsessed society, fluent and unaccented English is the top goal of language study and is pursued with fervor.
    It is not unusual for 6-month-old infants to be put in front of the television for as long as five hours a day to watch instruction videos, or for 7-year-olds to be sent out after dinner for English cram courses.
    South Korean parents will spend the equivalent of a month’s salary on monthly tuition at English-language kindergartens and up to U.S.＄50 an hour for tutors. Between the after-school courses, flashcards, books and videos, English instruction is estimated to be a U.S. ＄3-billion-a-year industry—and that doesn’t include the thousands of children sent abroad to hone their skills.
    In another display of linguistic zeal, the Seoul city government recently set up a hotline for citizens to call if they see English spelling or grammar mistakes on public signs. "Learning English is almost the national religion," said Jonathan Hilts, host of a popular English-language talk sow on South Korea’s Educational Broadcasting System.
    The most controversial aspect of the English craze is the tongue surgery, which critics say is unnecessary. No statistics exist in South Korea about the number of such operations, which usually are done in private clinics. However, doctors say the procedure’s popularity has soared with the boom in English instruction. Linguists sneer at the idea that South Koreans’ tongues are too short to speak English properly.
    "Since Westerners are taller they might have longer tongues. But this operation lengthens the tongue by only a millimeter or two and that has nothing to with it. The real problem for South Koreans, as for Japanese, is that their own languages make no distinction between Ls and Rs, so their ears cannot detect the difference." [br] It seems that tongue surgery will be most applauded by ______.
选项 A、Korean government officials in charge of the national religion
B、Korean linguists serious about the English zeal
C、Korean surgeons expecting to make a business out of it
D、Korean parents anxious to ensure their children a bright future
答案 D
解析 本文第1、3段就明确地表明anxious Korean parents want to have their children get the operation to speak fluent and unaccented English，但探究其深层次的目的当然是为了竞争美好的将来。
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