SPEAKING MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE COULD PREVENT ALZHEIMER'S
17. Read the text below and choose the correct word for each space.
Not 1. ........................... long ago, bilingualism 2. ........................... to be bad for your brain.
But it looks more and more 3. ........................... speaking more than one language could help save you from Alzheimer’s disease.
The 4. ........................... evidence from the bilingualism-is-good-for-you crew comes from Brian Gold, a neuroscientist at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington (USA). To test the idea, he asked older people who had grown up bilingual to do an attention-switching task, a skill that typically fades with age. Earlier research has found that people bilingual since childhood are better than other people at the high-order thinking called executive function as they get older.
Gold 5. ........................... that his bilingual seniors were 6. ........................... at the task, 7. ........................... had them quickly sorting colors and shapes, than their monolingual peers.
He then added an extra dimension by sticking the people’s heads into scanners to see what was happening inside their brains. The brains of the monolingual seniors were working 8. ........................... to complete the task, 9. ........................... the bilingual seniors’ brains were much more efficient, more like those of young adults.
Neuroscientists think that having more reserve brain 10. ........................... helps compensate for age-related declines in thinking and memory, and may help protect against the losses caused by Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
(Adapted from N. Shute, 2011 at www.npr.org)
1.
- A. such
- B. so
- C. very
- D. much
2.
- A. think
- B. thought
- C. was thought
- D. has thought
3.
- A. like
- B. as
- C. how
- D. such as
4.
- A. late
- B. last
- C. earliest
- D. latest
5.
- A. found
- B. find
- C. finded
- D. founded
6.
- A. well
- B. gooder
- C. better
- D. best
7.
- A. what
- B. who
- C. that
- D. which
8.
- A. harder
- B. hardy
- C. hardly
- D. more hard
9.
- A. but
- B. however
- C. while
- D. although
10.
- A. force
- B. strength
- C. energy
- D. power