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Expats do you fear learning a foreign language? How's this for motivation?by GoSouthExpat
Researchers at the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego study focused on people whose dominant language is Spanish, but who use English for other activities. Matt Leonard, Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD and principal investigator in the study, told Efe that "it is surprising to master a single language, but is even more amazing that we can learn two or more." "Overall, we found that in the language in which there is LESS ability, the brain recruits many more areas than those involved in processing the dominant language," said Leonard. Using technologies that are considered non-invasive, the researchers recorded brain activity while reading words to Spanish speakers in their native Spanish and then in English. Researchers want to locate the brain areas that present more targeted responses to the English, possibly reflecting the greater effort exerted to understand words in a second language. "So far we have found very interesting effects related to language. Overall, it appears that both the mother tongue as a second language-neutral representations share the traditional areas as the fronto-temporal left hemisphere. However, the language with less ability also involved bilateral visual regions during the same time," said Leonard. To interpret these results, we asked research subjects to carry out an assessment task in the first language and then in the second, drawing simple lines of concrete objects. The results showed that seeing a word in the language in which one has less ability is similar to viewing an image of the object itself. In other words, the lexical-semantic system in the second language is more based on sensory perceptions rather than abstract symbols, as with the native language. It is still unclear how the ability to second language acquisition and age can affect the amount of visual activity during the lexical-semantic. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis that adult second language is processed in a manner similar to their native language. "Bilingualism is spreading throughout society. I believe that children should be encouraged by the educational system to learn multiple languages," said Leonard. The study suggests the importance of supporting resources to promote bilingualism. "This is true for establishing and maintaining bilingual classes in schools, providing services for people in more than one language, and even extends to other health issues," said the researcher. Said Leonard it was difficult to recruit Hispanics for the study. The project involves the collaboration of professors, graduate and postdoctoral students from the disciplines of cognitive science, radiology, neuroscience, and linguistics. Another benefit of the study is that it can help you find techniques that can make it easier to learn another language to understand the way in which regions of the brain work in second language acquisition. One of the questions that researchers seek to determine is whether learning a second language interferes with the first and vice versa, as well as the relationship between the first and second in the learning process. It seeks to identify the differences, both in space and time, in the ways in which the bilingual brain represents the two languages and how the development of neural representations of second language affects both adults and children of different ages. Research and choose the right Spanish language learning system for you. See what Culture Transition Coach Heather Markel has to say with regards to this important subject in this interesting 2-minute video tip. This is a translation of an article published in Spanish here. |