虽然雅思阅读有难度，但是同学们也不能因此而对自己失去信心，多了解一些雅思阅读素材和技巧其实对备考雅思阅读还是很有帮助的。剑桥雅思阅读真题4test3reading3的内容，分享给大家。
A. Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one’s mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home.
B. In all cases, someone has to act as a source of language data – an informant. Informants are (ideally) native speakers of a language, who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information about the language (e.g. translations, comments about correctness, or judgements on usage). Often, when studying their mother tongue, linguists act as their own informants, judging the ambiguity, acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this approach makes it widely used, and it is considered the norm in the generative approach to linguistics. But a linguist’s personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other linguists, at which point resource is needed to more object methods of enquiry, using non-linguists as informants. The later procedure is unavoidable when working on foreign languages, or child speech.
C. Many factors must be considered when selecting informants – whether one is working with single speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting, small groups or large-scale samples. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies, scrupulous attention has been paid to the sampling theory employed, and in all cases, decisions have to be made about the best investigative techniques to use.
D. Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate (‘difficult’ pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. People talk abnormally when they know they are being recorded, and sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimise the ‘observer’s paradox’ (how to observe the way people behave when they are not being observed). Some recordings are made without the speakers being aware of the fact – a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording, such as keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style (e.g. asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality).
E. An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often unclear and ambiguous. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplements by the observer’s written comments on the non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in general. A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera cannot be everywhere), and transcription always benefits from any additional commentary provided by an observer.
F. Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behavious. With a bilingual informant, or though use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation technique (‘How do you say table in your language?’). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview work-sheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation, for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also several direct methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill in the blanks in a substitution frame (e.g. 'I ___ see a car.'), or feeding them the wrong stimulus for correction (‘Is it possible to say I no can see?’).
G. A representative sample of language, complied for the purpose of linguistic analysis, is known as a corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about frequency of usage, and it provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Its range and size are variable. Some corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, taking extracts from many kinds of text; others are extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a particular linguistic feature. The size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect, process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few minutes of speech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis; by contrast, corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An important principle is that all corpora, whatever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, and always need to be supplemented by data derived from the intuitions of native speakers of the language, though either introspection or experimentation.
Question 27-31
Reading Passage 3 has 7 paragraphs labelled A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct answer A-G into boxes 27-31 on the answer sheet. You may use any letter more than once.
27. The effect of recording on the way people talk.
28. The importance of taking note on body language.
29. The fact that language is influenced by social situation.
30. How informants can be helped to be less self-conscious.
31. Various methods that can be used to generate specific data.
Question 32-36
Complete the table below. Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
METHODS OF OBTAINING LINGUISTIC DATAADVANTAGESDISADVANTAGES
32 ............. as informantconvenientmethod of enquiry not objective enough
non-linguistic as informantnecessary with 33............. and child speechthe number of factors to be considered
recording an informantallows linguists' claims to be checked34 ............. of sound
videoing an informantallows speakers' 35 ......... to be observed36 ............. might miss certain things
Question 37-40
Complete the summary of paragraph G below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from passage for each answer.
A linguist can use a corpus to comment objectively on 37.............. Some corpora include with a wide range of language while others are used to focus on a 38 .................. The length of time the process takes will affect the 39................. of the corpus. No corpus can ever cover the whole language and so linguists often find themselves relying on the additional information that can be gained from the 40 ............. of those who speak the language concerned.
上述就是剑桥雅思阅读真题4test3reading3的内容介绍，剑桥雅思真题大家还是很有必要练习的，这也许就是备考的法宝一旦你掌握了里面的重要习题内容。最后，前程百利雅思频道小编预祝大家考出满意的雅思成绩。更多出国考试信息请继续关注前程百利雅思考试频道，或咨询400-890-6000得到快速专业的回答。
您还可能关注：
