山东省各地市2012年高考英语最新试题分类汇编17阅读理解六.docVIP

专题三 阅读理解(六) 【山东省潍坊市重点中学2012届高三2月月考】 C Endangered languages are languages that wouldn’t exist any longer, much like endangered species of plants or animals. Languages are considered to be endangered when parents are no longer teaching the language to their children and are not using it actively in everyday life. A language is considered to nearly disappear when it is spoken by only a few elderly native speakers. The world faces enormous challenges in order to protect different kinds of languages. Of the more than 6,912 languages, half may be in danger of disappearing in the next several decades. It is caused by many reasons: small numbers of speakers, the regular use of other languages, attitudes towards their languages, moving of the younger population, government policies, and languages used in education and so on. A language may lack important things such as a body of literature, and people who read and write it. A language may also lack prestige (声望) and support of its speakers. The survival of a language is also threatened when speakers move to other areas where different languages are spoken, or when government policies improve the use of a specific language in school, official business and the media. These situations encourage people to learn the wider-known language and may cause them, especially the young, to stop using their mother tongue. Often those speaking lesser-known languages will choose to learn a more prestigious language with the hope of greater economic opportunities. Most of the world’s parents are teaching their children English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Russian or some other main languages instead of their own languages for social and economic reasons. 66.What’s the main idea of this passage? A．Languages in the world.B．Reasons why languages become endangered. C．What an endangered language is.D．Languages spoken by few speakers. 7.About ________languages will probably disappear in this century according to th