Speech—the act of uttering sounds to convey meaning—is a kind of human action. Like any other constantly repeated action, speaking has to be learned, but once it is learned, it becomes a generally unconscious and apparently automatic process.
As far as we can determine, human beings do not need to be forced to speak; most babies seem to possess a sort of instinctive drive to produce speech like noises. How to speak and what to say are another matter altogether. There actions are learned from the particular society into which the baby is born; so that, like all conduct that is learned from a society—from the people around us—speech is a patterned activity.
The meandering(漫目无地的)babble(咿呀学语)and chatter of a young child are eventually channeled by imitation into a few orderly grooves that represent the pattern accepted as meaningful by the people around him. Similarly, a child’s indiscriminate(不加分辨的)practice of putting things into his mouth becomes limited to putting food into his mouth in a certain way.
The sounds that a child can make are more varied and numerous than the sounds that any particular language uses. However, a child born into a society with a pattern of language is encouraged to make a small selection of sounds and to make these few sounds over and over until it is natural for him to make these sounds and not others.
For an adult, the process of speaking usually involves___________________ .

A．conscious selection of sounds	B．imitation of those around him
C．a drive to make noises	D．unconscious actions

The selection says that most babies have an instinctive drive to __________ .

A．express ideas in words	B．make speech like noise
C．convey meaning	D．imitate sounds around them

Conduct that is learned from a society may be called___________________ .

A．instinctive drive

B．selection

C．automatic activity

D．patterned activity

The sounds that a child is able to make are  ___________________ .      .

A．not as varied as those used in language

B．more varied and numerous than those in any language

C．far fewer than those needed to form a language

D．completely different from the sounds of language

We may say that a child has learned to speak if he  ___________________ .     .

A．makes varied sounds

B．carefully considers each sound he makes

C．makes only certain sounds naturally

D．imitates people around him