剑桥雅思12Test6Passage3阅读原文翻译 The Benefits of Being Bilingual 双语使用者的优势
剑桥雅思12阅读第六套题目第三篇文章的主题为双语使用者的优势。文章一共7段，分别介绍了双语使用者在冲突管理型任务，感觉加工，掌握新语言，保持认知系统灵敏等方面的优势。下面是具体每一段的翻译。
点击查看这篇雅思阅读中需要大家掌握的重点词汇以及对应的答案解析：
雅思真题阅读词汇 剑桥雅思12 test 6 passage 3 双语使用者的优势The benefits of being bilingual
剑桥雅思12Test6Passage3阅读答案解析 The Benefits of Being Bilingual 双语的优势
剑桥雅思12 Test6 Passage3阅读原文翻译
段落A
According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now bilingual or multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several clear benefits of being bilingual.
根据最新的数据，世界上大多数人口现在都能够使用两种或多种语言（说着两种或更多种语言长大）。过去，与只说一种语言的同龄人相比，这些孩子被认为处于劣势。但在过去几十年里，技术的进步让研究者可以更加深入地探索双语使用如何影响并改变认知和神经系统，从而找出能够使用两种语言的一些明显好处。
段落B
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once: the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words regardless of the language to which they belong. Some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language co-activation’, comes from studying eye movements. A Russian-English bilingual asked to ‘pick up a marker’ from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for ‘stamp’, marka, sounds like the English word he or she heard, ‘marker’. In cases like this, language co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in either language.
研究发现，当双语人士使用一种语言时，另一种也会同时处于活跃状态。当我们听到一个单词时，我们并不是立刻听到完整的词汇：单词音节文章来自老烤鸭雅思按顺序传到耳朵里。早在单词说完之前，大脑的语言系统就开始猜测这个单词可能是什么。如果你听到can，你可能会激活诸如candy和candle这样的单词。至少在单词识别的早期阶段如此。对于双语使用者而言，这一激活过程并不局限于一种语言。不论单词所属的语言是什么，听觉输入都会激活相应的它们。这一被称作“语言协调激活”的现象最有说服力的证据来自于对眼球运动的研究。与不会俄语的人相比，一名俄语和英语的使用者被要求从一组物品中“pick up marker”时，会更多的看向邮票，因为俄语中对应邮票的单词marka，听起来与他/她听到的英语单词marker十分相似。在诸如此类的案例中，语言协调激活的出现是因为人们把听到的内容映射到任一语言的单词上。
段落C
Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties, however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers to name pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind. As a result, the constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a language at any given time. For this reason, bilingual people often perform better on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop Task, people see a word and are asked to name the colour of the word’s font. When the colour and the word match (i.e., the word ‘red’ printed in red), people correctly name the colour more quickly than when the colour and the word don’t match (i.e., the word ‘red’ printed in blue). This occurs because the word itself (‘red’) and its font colour (blue) conflict. Bilingual people often excel at tasks such as this, which tap into the ability to ignore competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input. Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks; for example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by colour (red or green) to categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid changes of strategy.
然而，应对这种持续的语言竞争会导致一些困难。例如，通晓不止一种语言会造成人们在说出图片名称时较为缓慢，并出现更多“话在嘴边”的现象，即你几乎能想到某个单词，却无法说出口。这样一来，两种语言持续的斗争就要求人们在任何时候都控制好语言的接入。正因为这一原因，双语使用者通常在那些需要管理冲突的任务上表现更好。在经典的斯特色谱任务中，参与者被要求说出所看到的字体的颜色。相比于颜色与单词不匹配的情况（比如red被印刷成蓝色），当颜色与单词匹配时（比如red被印刷成红色），人们可以更快地准确说出颜色名称。这是因为单词自身（red）与它的字体颜色（blue）相冲突。双语使用者通常在这类任务中表现的更好。他们擅长忽略干扰性信息而专注于输入信息中的有效内容。双语使用者在任务转换方面表现的也更好。例如，当双语使用者需要从将物体按颜色（红色或绿色）分类的任务中转换到按形状（圆形或三角形）分类时，他们会比单一语言使用者更快。这反映出，当需要进行快速的策略转变时，他们拥有更好的认知控制能力。
段落D
It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception.
双语优势的神经根源似乎延伸到传统上与感官处理更为相关的大脑区域。当使用单一语言的青少年和使用两种语言的青少年在没有背景噪音的干扰下听一段简单的演讲时，他们展现出高度相似的脑干反应。然而，当研究者在有背景噪音的情况下，为两组人播放相同的音频时，双语使用者的神经反应更为明显。这反映出他们可以更好地对声音的基础频率进行编码，而声音基础频率这一特征与音调知觉紧密相关。
段落E
Such improvements in cognitive and sensory processing may help a bilingual person to process information in the environment, and help explain why bilingual adults acquire a third language better than monolingual adults master a second language. This advantage may be rooted in the skill of focusing on information about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they already know.
这些认知和感官处理方面的提升可能有助于双语使用者处理环境中的信息，并有助于解释为什么使用双语的成年人会比使用单一语言的成年人更好的掌握第三种语言。这一优势的根源可能在于专注新语言的信息并减少已知语言干扰的能力。
段落F
Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those that become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease, bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of five years later than monolingual patients. In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the same. If the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same amount of fuel.
研究也表明，通过利用大脑备用网络来弥补那些由于老化而受到损伤的部分，双语经历可以帮助保持认知机制的灵敏。与单一语言使用者相比，老年双语使用者的记忆力较好。这会给我们的健康带来切实的好处。在一项对超过200名阿尔兹海默症（一种大脑退化疾病）患者的研究中，使用两种语言的病人报告症状比只使用一种语言的病人平均晚5年。在随后的一项研究中，研究者比较了阿尔兹海默症症状严重程度一致的双语病人和单一语言病人的大脑。令人惊讶的是，与单一语言的病人相比，双语使用者的大脑拥有更多的疾病体征，尽管他们展现出来的行为和能力是相同的。如果大脑是台发动机的话，双语能力可能会帮助它在相同燃料的情况下走的更远。
段落G
Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start very early. In one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to successfully learn the new rule. This suggests that for very young children, as well as for older people, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that transfer far beyond language.
此外，与双语经历相关的好处似乎很早就显现出来。在一项研究中，研究者教授来自单语或双语家庭的7个月大的婴儿。当他们听到清脆的声音时，一个木偶会出现在屏幕的一侧。在研究进行到一半时，木偶开始出现在屏幕的另一侧。为了得到奖励，婴儿必须调整他们所学到的规则。只有双语婴儿能够成功地学习新规则。这表明，对于年龄非常小的孩子以及年龄更大的人来说，在多语言环境中成长赋予他们远超语言的优势。
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