Some children are backward in speaking. Most often the reason for

this is that the mother is insensible to the signals of the infant, whose 【M1】__________

brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods

are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might

never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly

at the right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critic stage 【M2】__________

has passed.

Experts suggest that speech stages are reached at a fixed sequence 【M3】__________

and at a constant age, but there are cases that speech has started late in 【M4】__________

a child who eventually turns out to be high IQ. 【M5】__________

Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with a capacity to 【M6】__________

speak. What is special about man’s brain, compared with this of the 【M7】__________

monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the

sight and feel of. say, a toy-bear with the sound pattern “toy-bear”.

And even more incredible is that the young brain’s ability to pick out an 【M8】__________

order in language from the hubbub of sound around him, to analyze, to

combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways.

But speech has to be induced, and this depends on interaction

between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the

signals in the child’s babbling, grasping and smiling, and responding to 【M9】__________

them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dull the interaction 【M10】_________

because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious

signals.

【M9】