問題詳情

The World Cup, holiday homes and budget airlines are feeding an unexpected passion for learninglanguages. Are you still shouting in English at bemused people in other countries? That used to be the stereotypeof the English-speaker abroad. But is that all changing? This heatwave summer seems to be bringing a boom inlanguage learning. Language courses are reporting a surge in demand, newspapers have been giving awaylanguage-teaching CDs and language learning is the theme of BBC2's latest reality TV show, Excuse My French.So what's encouraged us out of our shells? Are languages really reaching the parts that they couldn'tpreviously reach? There could be something of a World Cup factor here - with the football fest in Germanymaking a very positive impression on the hundreds of thousands of England fans who went over. Football fansmight not be considered natural territory for language lessons. But before the competition, England football fanswere offered a crash course in learning a few German phrases - and this really does seem to have been anice-breaker. "It made a huge difference - particularly when fans saw the impact on ordinary people in Germany ofbeing able to say hello or good evening in their language," says Mark Perryman, organizer of the England fanssupporters' club in London, who took part in these lessons. "It helped to break down barriers and it broke down thestereotypes about England fans. There's an assumption that the English, let alone football fans, would never learna language." Travelling fans were also impressed by how well so many Germans could speak English, he says.And it even created some multi-lingual bantering. The Germans were singing "football's coming home" in Englishand the England fans learned how to sing it back in German, said Mr. Perryman. The language lessons for fanswere set up by the Goethe Institute, (the German equivalent of the British Council) - and institute spokesman,Oliver Benjamin, says that this summer's German courses are fully booked. "There's definitely been an increase ininterest in learning more about the language and culture - and it's much more of a younger audience," he says."The World Cup has made our work a hell of a lot easier," says Mr. Benjamin. And he says the longstandingresistance to learning languages is being diminished. There had been an "island mentality and a certain arrogancethat English is the world language". But this is changing, he says, not least because the UK is part of a globalized,multilingual world. In London, only 57% of the population speaks English as a first language, he says. It's nolonger unusual for people to move between languages.It makes a change to hear optimistic news about modern language learning. University languagedepartments have been closing because of a lack of students - and this in turn reflects how few pupils are takinglanguages at A-level. And there have been repeated warnings from industry about the economic cost of ournational deficit in language skills. But rather than an academic or business interest, another driver for the currentinterest in learning languages is the unprecedented appetite for travel. This weekend, at the start of the summerholidays, more than two million people flew out from UK airports. And it's no longer just package holidays andtourist resorts - people are exploring more independently and further afield. It might not make headlines, but thisis a significant social change, with more people than ever getting a taste of other places, cultures and languages."With budget airlines and cheaper travel, people are mixing more, seeing the ways other people do things. Thereare loads of lads I know from places like Sunderland who fetch up in all kinds of places in a way they never wouldhave done before," says Peter Daykin, a spokesman for the Football Supporters' Federation (FSF). "People arenow going abroad for a weekend to places like the Czech Republic, which once would have been unheard of," hesays. Mr. Daykin was another visitor to the World Cup who left with a sense that the journey through Germanyhad been a very "positive experience" for fans - a long way from the negative stereotypes of the English as【共 11 頁，第 8 頁】suspicious, tongue-tied travelers.People aren't only travelling abroad. They're now taking their property mania with them. According to theOffice for National Statistics, there are now almost 257,000 overseas holiday homes owned by people in the UK.And the Institut Francais, which promotes French language and culture, says that second-homers are part of thegrowing demand for language lessons. Francis Hetroy, director of languages at the institute, says that demand forFrench courses has risen by about 15% to 20% last year, when there were about 7,000 students. And this includesvery popular language courses offered in how to buy a property in France, he says.
67. What does bemused mean in the first paragraph?[!--empirenews.page--]
(A) stupid
(B) confused
(C) misguided
(D) disordered

參考答案

答案：B
難度：適中0.606061
統計：A(3),B(20),C(6),D(3),E(0)

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