Friday, January 28, 2011
Throughout the world, language resides as a barrier between cultures. The spread of technology and global business ventures turned language into a barrier that needed overcoming. As a result, there are a few languages that have taken a leading role as a common tongue throughout the world and English is one of them. To communicate business in anyway, you almost have to know English. If you live in the U.S, it is possible to get by without being fluent in the legal language of this country, but it will make life incredibly difficult. Not having a strong base in the English language puts limiters on what a person can accomplish in this country. It is necessary to overcome an obstacle of this size to achieve your goals and make use of other opportunities that may find you. Knowing the native tongue of this country gives a person options and a chance to find their own way to living well. Open doors and stop limiting yourself, learn English and start living the life you want.
As we have all heard before, knowledge is power. When that knowledge involves the leading method of communication, then it is a power that acts as the key to all the locks around. Do not be fooled, the locks are everywhere. You cannot get most jobs offered without knowing English. You cannot raise higher in any business organization without knowing how to communicate in English. Healthcare is mostly handled in English, so if you cannot speak it, how will you properly maintain your health and the health of your loved ones? Driving, finding good deals, keeping up with current events and everything else is done in English. Not learning it or not becoming fluent in it is creating a handicap for yourself. It is like cutting off a limb; in this case, perhaps two.
Advancing down a path to a better life will eventually, require that you know the English language. One of the main tools for bettering life is furthering ones own education. If you live in the U.S, education is handled in English. The dots connect themselves.
If you are not fluent or at least have a firm grasp of the language, then gaining one should be your first priority. It is the biggest problem anyone not fluent faces in this country, when trying to make their way. There are accredited organizations that can and will help anyone improve their skills with English. Learn English and start unlocking the doors to a better life .
As we have all heard before, knowledge is power. When that knowledge involves the leading method of communication, then it is a power that acts as the key to all the locks around. Do not be fooled, the locks are everywhere. You cannot get most jobs offered without knowing English. You cannot raise higher in any business organization without knowing how to communicate in English. Healthcare is mostly handled in English, so if you cannot speak it, how will you properly maintain your health and the health of your loved ones? Driving, finding good deals, keeping up with current events and everything else is done in English. Not learning it or not becoming fluent in it is creating a handicap for yourself. It is like cutting off a limb; in this case, perhaps two.
Advancing down a path to a better life will eventually, require that you know the English language. One of the main tools for bettering life is furthering ones own education. If you live in the U.S, education is handled in English. The dots connect themselves.
If you are not fluent or at least have a firm grasp of the language, then gaining one should be your first priority. It is the biggest problem anyone not fluent faces in this country, when trying to make their way. There are accredited organizations that can and will help anyone improve their skills with English. Learn English and start unlocking the doors to a better life .
Monday, January 24, 2011
Traveling abroad presents an ideal opportunity to master a foreign language. While the immersion process facilitates communication in a diverse world, people are often surprised to find they have difficulty returning to their native language. This phenomenon is referred to as first-language attrition and has University of Oregon psychologist Benjamin Levy wondering how it is possible to forget, even momentarily, words used fluently throughout one’s life.
In a study appearing in the January, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Levy and his colleague Dr. Michael Anderson discovered that people do not forget their native language simply because of less use, but that such forgetfulness reflects active inhibition of native language words that distract us while we are speaking the new language. Therefore, this forgetfulness may actually be an adaptive strategy to better learn a second language.
In the study, native English speakers who had completed at least one year of college level Spanish were asked to repeatedly name objects in Spanish. The more the students were asked to repeat the Spanish words, the more difficulty they had generating the corresponding English labels for the objects. In other words, naming objects in another language inhibits the corresponding labels in the native language, making them more difficult to retrieve later.
Interestingly, the study also showed that the more fluent bilingual students were far less prone to experience these inhibitory effects. These findings suggest that native language inhibition plays a crucial role during the initial stages of second language learning. That is, when first learning a new language, we have to actively ignore our easily accessible native language words while struggling to express our thoughts in a novel tongue. As a speaker achieves bilingual fluency, native-language inhibition becomes less necessary, accounting for the better performances of fluent bilingual speakers in the study.
Although the value of suppressing previously learned knowledge to learn new concepts may appear counterintuitive, Levy explains that “first-language attrition provides a striking example of how it can be adaptive to (at least temporarily) forget things one has learned.”
More information for this ongoing study can be found at the University of Oregon Memory Lab website at http://memorycontrol.uoregon.edu/.
In a study appearing in the January, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Levy and his colleague Dr. Michael Anderson discovered that people do not forget their native language simply because of less use, but that such forgetfulness reflects active inhibition of native language words that distract us while we are speaking the new language. Therefore, this forgetfulness may actually be an adaptive strategy to better learn a second language.
In the study, native English speakers who had completed at least one year of college level Spanish were asked to repeatedly name objects in Spanish. The more the students were asked to repeat the Spanish words, the more difficulty they had generating the corresponding English labels for the objects. In other words, naming objects in another language inhibits the corresponding labels in the native language, making them more difficult to retrieve later.
Interestingly, the study also showed that the more fluent bilingual students were far less prone to experience these inhibitory effects. These findings suggest that native language inhibition plays a crucial role during the initial stages of second language learning. That is, when first learning a new language, we have to actively ignore our easily accessible native language words while struggling to express our thoughts in a novel tongue. As a speaker achieves bilingual fluency, native-language inhibition becomes less necessary, accounting for the better performances of fluent bilingual speakers in the study.
Although the value of suppressing previously learned knowledge to learn new concepts may appear counterintuitive, Levy explains that “first-language attrition provides a striking example of how it can be adaptive to (at least temporarily) forget things one has learned.”
More information for this ongoing study can be found at the University of Oregon Memory Lab website at http://memorycontrol.uoregon.edu/.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)