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Why Some People really are wired better for learning languages

Angela Grant–a PhD student in the department of psychology at the Pennsylvania State University.

Published in association with Cognitive Neuroscience Society,an Aeon [1]Partner 28 October, 2016

 

Remember the last time you took a language course? No matter if it was online or classroom-based, immersive or translation-focused, I’d bet a large sum that your language abilities when you left that course were different from those of your peers. Perhaps you are like my husband, better at reading and writing than speaking in a second language. Perhaps you are like me, a whizz (зд – молодец) in the classroom but a bit shy in real life. Maybe you’ve got the basics down, but not much else.

These types of individual differences exist in every field, from mathematics and music to art and athletics. But in my own field, the psychology of second-language acquisition, the reason for the difference has remained unclear: why does learning a new language come easier to some than to others?

… Most recently, I was excited to find that neuroscientist Xiaoqian Chai and her colleagues at McGill University in Montreal have been using resting-state fMRI (a technique that measures brain activity by tracking oxygen flow while a person is awake but not doing a task)[2] to investigate exactly this question. Looking at students in an intensive 12-week French immersion course, they found large individual differences in language improvement.

To do the study, published this year in The Journal of Neuroscience, the researchers scanned the brains of native English speakers before beginning the immersion course, which involved practising French six hours a day, five days a week, while living in the bilingual environment of Montreal in Quebec. If you want to learn a language quickly, this is the way to do it.

Rather than relying on course grades or self-report, the McGill team collected spontaneous speech data (by asking participants to, say, tell them about a day at the beach) and reading samples in both French and English before and after the course. Analysis of the brain scans revealed that differences in improvement of each behaviour were related to pre-existing differences in brain connectivity. In short, the flow of oxygen in the participants’ brains while at rest predicted how much specific aspects of speech or language skills would improve. …

Few studies have been able to track real learners over long periods of time due to expense and high drop-out rates, so we still don’t know the answers to these questions. I have first-hand experience with how difficult long-term studies are: With the help of my advisor and colleagues at the Pennsylvania State University, I followed a small group of Spanish learners over one year of instruction. We found that different areas of the brain – and different cognitive skills – came into prominence as more of the second language was learned.

As we understand more about the way language is learned, we’ll be able to translate that knowledge into techniques that play into each individual’s strengths. The next generation of middle-schoolers are coming into a world that’s more globalised than ever before, and they are going to need our help.

 

 

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has an established tradition that has undoubtedly provided leadership, as well as an intellectual “nudge”for what is still generally called “General English” or, more disparagingly, “English for No Obvious Reason.” As John Swales demonstrated in his 1988 ESP history (Episodes), developing an appropriate pedagogy for a specific group of learners has always been the goal of ESP practitioners. Studying language, discourses, and contexts of use—as well as student needs, in the broadest sense—and then applying these findings to the pedagogical practices, is what distinguishes ESP from other branches of applied linguistics and language teaching. In a more recent historical overview, Belcher (2004) noted that:

 

Unlike other pedagogical approaches, which may be less specificneeds–based and more theory-driven, ESP pedagogy places heavydemands on its practitioners to collect empirical needs-assessmentdata, to create or adapt materials to meet specific needs identified,and to cope with often unfamiliar subject matter and even languageuse…. (p. 166)

 

In Episodes of ESP, Swales marked the modern beginnings of ESP research with C.L.Barber’s “some measurable characteristics of modern scientific prose” (1988, pp. 1–16), which Swales spoke of as “the first clear demonstration that the descriptive techniques of Modern Linguistics... could be successfully applied to the language of science and technology” (p. 14).

Swales’ remaining fourteen “episodes” contain two famous examples of ESP research: Lackstrom, Selinker, and Trimble’s “Grammar and Technical English” (1972), and Tarone, Dwyer, Gillette, and Icke, “On the use of the passive in astrophysics papers” (1981), each of which represents a turning point in the research literature and the pedagogies that drew from it.

Tarone et al., the final “episode” in the volume, is a portent for the future, as the authors of this article, one of whom was a content specialist (an important addition), state their purposes:

We... undertook to examine in more detail the frequency of occurrence of the active and passive forms in two journal papers in the field of astrophysics, and to investigate in particular the rhetorical function of the passive in these texts (Swales, 1988, p. 192, italics added).

In this article, we read a basic argument that continues to be an ESP research focus: that to best understand how language is used, we must examine it within its context. Also basic to this final “episode” is the emphasis on rhetorical function, a concept that had appeared somewhat earlier in the “Washington School” literature (see, e.g., Selinker, Tarone, &Hanzeli, 1981) and continues to be a central issue in our research agendas.

 

(From: Introduction: New Directions for ESP Research

Ann M. Johns, Brian Paltridge, and Diane Belcher.http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=371075

Michigan ELT, 2011).

 

 

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

(Except from Winston Churchill’s speech “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”.June 4, 1940;House of Commons, London.)

 

Winston Churchill, one of the greatest orators of the 20th century, was interestingly enough, like Demosthenes and other great orators before him, born with a speech impediment which he worked on until it no longer hindered him. One would never guess this from hearing Churchill’s strong and reassuring voice, a voice that would buoy up Britain during some of her darkest hours.

During the Battle of France, Allied Forces became cut off from troops south of the German penetration and perilously trapped at the Dunkirk bridgehead. On May 26, a wholesale evacuation of these troops, dubbed “Operation Dynamo,” began. The evacuation was an amazing effort-the RAF kept the Luftwaffe at bay while thousands of ships, from military destroyers to small fishing boats, were used to ferry 338,000 French and British troops to safety, far more than anyone had thought possible.

On June 4, Churchill spoke before the House of Commons, giving a report which celebrated the “miraculous deliverance” at Dunkirk, while also seeking to temper a too rosy of view of what was on the whole a “colossal military disaster.”

 

 

 

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

(Excerpt from: Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream”


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