【文章完結】IELTSリーディング解き方の解説と練習 ⑪　

こんにちは！

SOLO IELTS TOEFLのルークです！オンラインで英語を教えています。

この記事では、IELTSリーディング「文章完結問題」の解き方の解説と練習問題を紹介します。

「文章完結問題の解き方を知りたい方」や「抜け目なく対策したい人」の参考になれば幸いです。

リーディング「文章完結」

IELTSリーディングの文章完結問題は、途中まで与えられている文章を選択肢の中から選んで完結させる問題です。

この問題形式で試されているスキルは、情報を正確に理解できているかの確認と、特定箇所の把握です。

文章「完成」問題と、名前が似ています。文章完成問題は、パッセージ内の文章がランダムにパラフレーズされた状態で抜き出され、用意されている空欄を埋める形式です。

覚えていない人は、以下から確認してください。

参照リンク:【文章完成】

回答のコツ

IELTSリーディング、「文章完結問題」を回答する際のコツは以下になります。

コツ1. 問いの文章を選択肢の前に見る
コツ2. 問いの文章は必ずパラフレーズされると認識する
コツ3. 問いの順番通りに答えが出現するので注意する
コツ4. 選択肢は問いの数よりも多く用意されているので惑わされない

文章完結問題は、出題頻度が低い問題形式ですが、仮に出題された際は、問いのキーワードを参照に、パッセージの上から順に答えの該当箇所をきちんと見つけていくことが鍵になります。

練習問題

それでは、実際の練習問題を解いてみましょう。

指示文

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-E, below.
Write the correct letter, A-E.
38. The Arrernte language breaks a ‘rule’ concerning ＿＿＿＿
39. The Lao language has been identified as lacking ＿＿＿＿
40. It has now been suggested that Amazonia Piraha does not have ＿＿＿＿

選択肢

A. words of a certain grammatical type.
B. a sequence of sounds predicted by UG.
C. words which can have more than one meaning.
D. the language feature regarded as the most basic.
E. sentences beyond a specified length.

Language diversity

One of the most influential ideas in the study of languages is that of universal grammar (UG). Put forward by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, it is widely interpreted as meaning that all languages are basically the same, and that the human brain is born language-ready, with an in-built programme that is able to interpret the common rules underlying any mother tongue. For five decades this idea prevailed, and influenced work in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. To understand language, it implied, you must sweep aside the huge diversity of languages, and find their common human core.
Since the theory of UG was proposed, linguists have identified many universal language rules. However, there are almost always exceptions. It was once believed, for example, that if a language had syllables[1] that begin with a vowel and end with a consonant (VC), it would also have syllables that begin with a consonant and end with a vowel (CV). This universal lasted until 1999, when linguists showed that Arrernte, spoken by Indigenous Australians from the area around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, has VC syllables but no CV syllables.
Other non-universal universals describe the basic rules of putting words together. Take the rule that every language contains four basic word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Work in the past two decades has shown that several languages lack an open adverb class, which means that new adverbs cannot be readily formed, unlike in English where you can turn any adjective into an adverb, for example ‘soft’ into ‘softly’. Others, such as Lao, spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all. More controversially, some linguists argue that a few languages, such as Straits Salish, spoken by indigenous people from north-western regions of North America, do not even have distinct nouns or verbs. Instead, they have a single class of words to include events, objects and qualities.
Even apparently indisputable universals have been found lacking. This includes recursion, or the ability to infinitely place one grammatical unit inside a similar unit, such as ‘Jack thinks that Mary thinks that … the bus will be on time’. It is widely considered to be the most essential characteristic of human language, one that sets it apart from the communications of all other animals. Yet Dan Everett at Illinois State University recently published controversial work showing that Amazonian Piraha does not have this quality.
But what if the very diversity of languages is the key to understanding human communication? Linguists Nicholas Evans of the Australian National University in Canberra, and Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, believe that languages do not share a common set of rules. Instead, they say, their sheer variety is a defining feature of human communication – something not seen in other animals. While there is no doubt that human thinking influences the form that language takes, if Evans and Levinson are correct, language in turn shapes our brains. This suggests that humans are more diverse than we thought, with our brains having differences depending on the language environment in which we grew up. And that leads to a disturbing conclusion: every time a language becomes extinct, humanity loses an important piece of diversity.
If languages do not obey a single set of shared rules, then how are they created? ‘Instead of universals. you get standard engineering solutions that languages adopt again and again, and then you get outliers.’ says Evans. He and Levinson argue that this is because any given language is a complex system shaped by many factors, including culture, genetics and history. There- are no absolutely universal traits of language, they say, only tendencies. And it is a mix of strong and weak tendencies that characterises the ‘bio-cultural’ mix that we call language.
According to the two linguists, the strong tendencies explain why many languages display common patterns. A variety of factors tend to push language in a similar direction, such as the structure of the brain, the biology of speech, and the efficiencies of communication. Widely shared linguistic elements may also be ones that build on a particularly human kind of reasoning. For example, the fact that before we learn to speak we perceive the world as a place full of things causing actions (agents) and things having actions done to them (patients) explains why most languages deploy these grammatical categories.
Weak tendencies, in contrast, are explained by the idiosyncrasies of different languages. Evans and Levinson argue that many aspects of the particular natural history of a population may affect its language. For instance, Andy Butcher at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, has observed that indigenous Australian children have by far the highest incidence of chronic middle-ear infection of any population on the planet, and that most indigenous Australian languages lack many sounds that are common in other languages, but which are hard to hear with a middle-ear infection. Whether this condition has shaped the sound systems of these languages is unknown, says Evans, but it is important to consider the idea.
Levinson and Evans are not the first to question the theory of universal grammar, but no one has summarised these ideas quite as persuasively, and given them as much reach. As a result, their arguments have generated widespread enthusiasm, particularly among those linguists who are tired of trying to squeeze their findings into the straitjacket of ‘absolute universals’. To some, it is the final nail in UG’s coffin. Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has been a long-standing critic of the idea that all languages conform to a set of rules. ‘Universal grammar is dead,’ he says.

解答

以下が、解答になります。

38. B
39. A
40. D

解答説明

解答の説明として、問いのキーワードが本文のどこにあるのか確認しましょう。

Q38. The Arrernte language breaks a ‘rule’ concerning
パラフレーズ.
Arrernte, spoken by Indigenous Australians from the area around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, has VC syllables but no CV syllables

Q39. The Lao language has been identified as lacking
パラフレーズ.
such as Lao, spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all

Q40. It has now been suggested that Amazonia Piraha does not have
パラフレーズ.
Even apparently indisputable universals have been found lacking. This includes recursion …Amazonian Piraha does not have this quality.

以上が、IELTSリーディング「文章完結問題」の解き方の解説と練習問題の紹介でした。

このタイプの問題形式は、答えとなる箇所を把握するためには、きちんとパラフレーズされた語彙を見つけることがポイントになります！

次のレッスンでは、多肢選択問題を学習します。多肢選択問題は、必ずひっかけの要素が入っているため、きちんと対策が必要です。