内容正文:
2024年新高考英语题型精析精练与话题拓展
02.人工智能
一、阅读理解
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Some are concerned that AI tools are turning language learning into a weakening pursuit. More and more people are using simple, free tools, not only to decode text but also to speak. With these apps’ conversation mode, you talk into a phone and a spoken translation is heard moments later; the app can also listen for another language and produce a translation in yours.
Others are less worried. Most people do not move abroad or have the kind of on-going contact with a foreign culture that requires them to put in the work to become fluent. Nor do most people learn languages for the purpose of humanising themselves or training their brains. On their holiday, they just want a beer and the spaghetti without incident.
Douglas Hofstadter, an expert in many languages, has argued that something profound (深刻的) will disappear when people talk through machines. He describes giving a broken, difficult speech in Chinese, which required a lot of work but offered a sense of satisfaction at the end.
As AI translation becomes an even more popular labor-saving tool, people can be divided into two groups. There will be those who want to stretch their minds, expose themselves to other cultures or force their thinking into new pathways. This group will still take on language study, often aided by technology. Others will look at learning a new language with a mix of admiration and puzzlement, as they might with extreme endurance (耐力) sports: “Good for you, if that’s your thing, but a bit painful for my taste.”
But a focus on the learner alone misses the fundamentally social nature of language. It is a bit like analysing the benefits of close relationships to heart-health but overlooking the inherent (固有的) value of those bonds themselves. When you try to ask directions in broken Japanese or ruin a joke in broken German, you are making direct contact with someone. And when you speak a language well enough to tell a story with perfect timing or put d