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掌握一门外语的程度有四种级别，而大多数人甚至始终不能超越用外语点菜的水平，而新科技的发展正在让学一门外语的成本收益分析大大改变。那么，学到怎样的程度才值得花时间投资呢？学外语有哪些“副产品”好处？
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
Herculean [,hə:kju'li:ən; hə'ku:liən] 赫拉克勒斯式的，非常困难的
nattering[ˈnætə] 唠叨，瞎扯
salon['sælɒn] 客厅
cognitive-functioning 认知功能
阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。
Aged 57, the American William Alexander set out to learn French. His engaging new memoir, Flirting with French, describes his year-long attempt. You come away from the book with an unfashionable question: for native English-speakers aged over 12, is it still worth investing the time to learn a language? The twin rise of global English and online translation engines has changed the cost-benefit analysis.
Having spent much of my life trying to learn languages, I reckon there are four levels of mastery. The first is basic conversation: the ability to order dinner in German, for instance. Many people who study a language for years never get beyond this level. However, for anglophones this skill is becoming less useful. When I began learning German 30 years ago, many adult Germans couldn't cope in basic English. Today, the tourist who stammers a few hard-earned German words is often answered in cheery English. This is increasingly true worldwide. English today is “more widely spoken and written, than any language has ever been”, wrote Robert McCrum et al in The Story of English. In addition, smartphone apps can now translate speech on the spot. Learning German (say) just for basic conversation probably isn't worth the effort any more.
The second level of mastery is reading a language – perhaps not well enough to read Goethe but enough to understand a German newspaper. But this skill too is becoming obsolete. Online translation engines like Google Translate keep improving. Feed in a German article, and you'll usually get a serviceable English version instantaneously. Google Translate isn't quite Star Trek's “Universal Translator” yet, but then neither are most human linguists. I often use Google Translate to draft emails in French, though the results still require some editing. In short: don't bother learning a language just for functional reading ability.
The third level of language mastery – high-level conversation – obviously remains useful. However, depending on the language, it can take years of work. Continental Europeans learn English relatively easily, because they absorb it almost unconsciously through TV and music, and then get to practise it in conversations with all varieties of foreigner.
But anglophones typically get fewer opportunities to master foreign languages. Exotic languages can take Herculean effort. I once met an American who had spent seven years learning Mandarin Chinese. He said he regretted having done so, because he hadn't got much beyond basic conversation.
Crucially, most anglophones only start learning languages at school at about age 12 – exactly the age when the ability to learn languages is nosediving. Alexander quotes Michael Long, an expert at the University of Maryland, as saying that only a “tiny, tiny minority” of post-adolescent learners will attain near-native proficiency in another language.
After 12 years in Paris, I speak enough French to function at dinner parties and interview people. But I still sound even more boring and stupid in French than in English. The extra moment I take to process a sentence drains spontaneity from conversations. When a French person makes a joke, I panic.
In any case, viewed strictly in terms of narrow personal advantage, anglophones do best when speaking English to foreigners. That way we control the conversation, while they struggle and sound stupid. This helps us triumph in office politics, business deals and bar quarrels.
The truly useful level of linguistic mastery is perfect fluency. To me, this means being able to say and understand everything in a language, even if you have an accent and make grammatical errors. If you're perfectly fluent, you can have long evenings nattering with close friends around kitchen tables. That's the way to understand a country. The fluent Dutch I learnt in childhood has taken me into every room of the Dutch house. In France, I've never got beyond the salon.
To achieve perfect fluency, you need to start very young – preferably as an infant. The elite fashion for bilingual kindergartens and Mandarin-speaking nannies is easy to mock but it's the correct way to learn a foreign language. Anyone starting after age 12 probably won't get far. Alexander admits, after 13 months studying French: “Not only have I failed to become fluent, or even conversant, in French, but I've failed spectacularly.” George Orwell came to a similar conclusion: “In my life I have learned seven foreign languages, including two dead ones, and out of those seven I retain only one, and that not brilliantly. This would be quite a normal case.”
Of course, studying a language has benefits besides actually learning the language. The learning process can also help you appreciate another culture (though probably not much if all you can say is “Zwei Bier, bitte”). Better, learning a language improves problem-solving and memory skills. Put simply: bilingual kids are smarter. It even seems to work for older people. After Alexander's year of study, he took a cognitive-functioning test. His scores – worrying a year before – had skyrocketed. The implications, he concludes, are “so startling, so important, I can almost overlook my failure to learn French”.
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A.The rise of online translation engines.
B.The emerging markets are rising.
C.The age of someone who wants to learn a language.
答案 (1)
A.Level 1.
B.Level 2.
C.Level 3.
答案 (2)
A.Well enough to read Goethe.
B.Being able to say and understand it perfectly.
C.Well enough to overcome accent and grammatical errors.
答案 (3)
A.Being able to appreciate one's own culture.
B.Improving problem-solving and memory skills
C.Fostering bilingual and smarter kids.
D.Forgetting about the failure of learning a language.
答案 (4)
(1) 答案：A.The rise of online translation engines.解释：对英语为母语的人来说，“全球英语”和在线翻译工具的发展，改变了投资时间学外语的“成本收益分析”，其实这对非英语母语的人来说也是一样的：学第二外语的性价比似乎不那么高了。
(2) 答案：A.Level 1.解释：“用德语在餐馆点菜的水平”，是掌握一门语言的第一级水平，可惜很多人学了多年的外语也无法超越这一水平。由于英语的广泛使用，和手机技术的发展，作者认为，如果你只是想学德语跟德国人简单对话的话，这个价值就不很大了。
(3) 答案：B.Being able to say and understand it perfectly.解释：作者对此的定义是，可以完美熟练的听说，可以闲谈扯淡，就算有口音和一些语法错误也没关系。——这是唯一值得花时间去学一门语言以达到的阶段。
(4) 答案：B.Improving problem-solving and memory skills解释：学外语有助于了解外国文化，而不是本国文化。双语孩子更聪明是作为一个“学外语锻炼解决问题的能力和记忆能力”的论据出现的。至于让人忘记学外语的失败经历，是个玩笑罢了。