Showing posts with label English Course. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English Course. Show all posts
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/.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Today we are all part of a “Global Village”. The Internet continues to have exponential growth, as even more people are becoming aware of this “Global Village” on a personal level. People correspond with others from around the globe on a regular basis, products are bought and sold with increasing ease from all over the word and real time coverage of major news events is taken for granted. English plays a central role in this globalization and it has become the de facto language of choice for communication between the various people that live on this planet.
Many English speakers do not speak English as their first language. In fact, they often use English as a sort of backup language in order to communicate with other people who also speak English as a foreign language. At this point students often wonder what kind of English they are learning. Are they learning English as it is spoken in England? Are they learning English as it is spoken in the United States or Australia? One of the most important questions seems to be left out: Do all students really need to learn English as it is spoken in any one country? Would it not be better to strive towards a global English? Let me put this into perspective. If a business person from China wants to close a deal with a business person from Germany, what difference does it make if they speak either US or UK English? In this situation, it does not matter what version of English they use to communicate, as both parties are likely to understand each other.
Communication enabled by the Internet is even less tied to standard forms of English as communication in English is exchanged between partners in both English speaking and non-English speaking countries. I feel that two important ramifications of this trend are as follows:
These questions and more should be addressed in order to give ESL students the education they need in the English language so it will be affective in their lives.
Many English speakers do not speak English as their first language. In fact, they often use English as a sort of backup language in order to communicate with other people who also speak English as a foreign language. At this point students often wonder what kind of English they are learning. Are they learning English as it is spoken in England? Are they learning English as it is spoken in the United States or Australia? One of the most important questions seems to be left out: Do all students really need to learn English as it is spoken in any one country? Would it not be better to strive towards a global English? Let me put this into perspective. If a business person from China wants to close a deal with a business person from Germany, what difference does it make if they speak either US or UK English? In this situation, it does not matter what version of English they use to communicate, as both parties are likely to understand each other.
Communication enabled by the Internet is even less tied to standard forms of English as communication in English is exchanged between partners in both English speaking and non-English speaking countries. I feel that two important ramifications of this trend are as follows:
- Teachers need to evaluate just how important learning “standard” and/or idiomatic usage is for their students.
- Native speakers need to become more tolerant and perceptive when communicating with non-native speakers of English.
These questions and more should be addressed in order to give ESL students the education they need in the English language so it will be affective in their lives.
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